Upgrade - 82: Baby Pro

Episode Date: March 28, 2016

Extra special guest star Serenity Caldwell joins Jason to talk about the new iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, the drowning of a MacBook Air, and much more.

Welcome to Upgrade from RelayFM. This is episode number 82. Upgrade was brought to you by the good people at Smile for PDF Pen Pro, ITProTV, and MailRoute. I am Jason Snell. Mike Hurley is on assignment. And instead of Mike being here, I am joined by my very special guest star, Serenity Caldwell. Hello. Hello.

Thank you for having me on your 82nd episode, Jason. Welcome to Upgrade. We don't have very many guests. It's usually having me on your 82nd episode, Jason. Welcome to Upgrade. We don't have, we do not have very many guests. It's usually just me and Mike. I know. I feel very, very honored. Consider this is my second time.

You've been enshrined in the Pantheon. You're one of the, you're one of our special, I guess it's sort of, we brought you on a second time for that, that the follow-up. So this is like your third time on. You may be the leading guest now, for all I know. Oh it's possible i have been upgraded but you yes yes but um mike's mike's uh mike's off on um like i said on assignment that is a broadcasting podcasting code for being on vacation and uh but we like to just pretend that he's off in like the mountains of some far-off region reporting back for a story that he'll be doing. Oh, yes.

He's gone off into the mystical wilderness in search of the perfect pen. No, I think he's just sitting on a couch drawing doodles. But it's fine. It's fine. We will soldier on without Mike. So we got a lot to cover. Last week was the car cast um where i did the entire podcast from my car that's right i listened to some of that not entire podcast i guess because because i got home and so i switched to my proper mic setup

uh at the at the very end of that but i the i would say in terms of follow-up, there was a lot of positive reaction to that. People seemed to like it. I was concerned and Mike was concerned that it was not going to be audible, but it sounded okay. Obviously, we wouldn't do every episode from a car. That would be a different podcast

that we would not want to do. And I was surprised. I only heard from a couple of people who believe that nobody should ever talk on the phone while they're driving a car. And to those people, I say, I salute you. I'm a pretty safe driver. I've never gotten in an accident. I was not driving as fast, nor was I in the left-hand lane while we were doing the podcast. And when it started to rain, I got, I slowed down and went even further over to the right to just sort of keep it real. And then it poured and all the traffic stopped.

And yeah, it was an experience, but it was no different really than all the thoughts that are pinging around in my head when I'm usually driving that stretch from Cupertino back up to Marin County, which I just did. I did that. You did that today? I was back at Apple again today. So there's some follow-up is that I was down there today and I was doing some briefings and picking up an iPad Pro 9.7 inch and an iPhone SE. So I get to play with those now, which is fun.

Rose gold, Jason? I think it's just gold. I think it's plain old gold, which is fine because I can't see color very well, right? That's true. Light casts of red in the gold, it's kind of lost on me. Rose gold would be... I would be a bad person to receive rose gold

things, I think. It's still shiny. You were not at the Apple event last week, but you were nearby, so did you get a chance shiny you were you were not at the apple event last week but you were nearby so did you get a chance to play with the play with the new stuff i was in the periphery no i did not get a chance to play with it and it made me i'm getting my yeah i'm getting uh i'm getting an ipad uh it's 9.7 on thursday at which point yeah i'm going to do a huge artist's review for imor good on 9.7 versus 12.9 and also just is the 9.7 a good tool for artists but uh you know renee ritchie of course uh editor in chief of imor he got a chance to play with it a lot and he really likes it uh i think that there

is based on what i saw at the event and based off of what I've been reading since, I feel like there's a lot for people who either have been on the fence about buying the big iPad Pro or just have never bought an iPad before. I think there's a lot for them to like in this new tablet that Apple has created. Yeah. I mean, it's also the classic you know, it's the classic size, right? It is. It's what we think of as an iPad. Yep. You know, if if Apple had come out with this iPad in 2010, I think I my my head would have exploded, just completely exploded. Because in

2010, this is what I wanted from the iPad. This is what I dreamed of being like, yes, it's a tablet that I can draw on. That's from Apple that runs iOS apps. And of course, you know, I got the original iPad and I still loved it very much, even though the drawing was not nearly what I wanted from it. But now, now that exists, that is available to people that is available to every 16 year old kid that can save enough, you know, babysitting money or plead with their parents to get a $600 tablet. That's cheaper than the Wacom tablet that I bought when I was 14, which is kind of crazy. Yeah, it's quite a thing. So let's dive into the iPad Pro a little bit.

So neither of us has spent an extended amount of time with it. I have spent a small amount of time with it, both at Apple and having taken possession of it now. A lot of people had drawing-related questions, though, because obviously— So we should say it's like the moment that every Apple-related writer waits for, which is for Phil Schiller to tweet out a link to your story, which you got for your excellent drawn review of the Apple Pencil on iMore, which is a great idea, by the way. That was just a that is a perfect idea. How do you do a story like that a little bit differently? And you did it and Phil Schiller tweeted it out, which was pretty awesome.

I still don't believe that that actually happened. He has people. I'm sure it was just his people. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Just posed for'm sure for him it wasn't yeah it wasn't a really no i i don't know i i am literally speechless uh i i have no words i just end up with babbles uh about you know when that happened i i just kind of stared at my my twitter account and just went really no that that i'm that's a fake account right yeah right yeah fake phil schiller yeah surely that's that's a parody account like the johnny i parody it's yeah exactly exactly it's not real or hair force one it's not real uh but i'm i'm really glad that that

resonated with so many people and what was really exciting about that review was not just you know drawing it was a lot of fun and i ended up that was something that I'd had in the back of my head for about two, three months. And then actually putting it to digital paper, as you will, only happened like a couple weeks, like right before we actually launched the review where I thought, you know what, the new iPad is supposed to be coming out soon. And everybody, now that pencil can actually be purchased by people. You know, when it first came out, we had to ship Mike a pencil overseas because he couldn't get it in the UK. Now people can actually buy the pencil. This is probably the perfect time for people to kind of take a second look or maybe on the fence. And it did better than my wildest dreams, honestly. It goes to show you, too. I mean, we so often rush to be the first post.

I mean, yeah, if you strip it all away, that's absolutely it. And it's funny. People may not know. Some people may have noticed that Apple did something a little bit different with the event last Monday, which is they still had a group of people who got a product on the day of the event. That happens. Sometimes I'm in that list. Sometimes I'm not in that list. I wasn't this time. But it used to be when you were in that list, you got it and you signed an embargo. And they said, okay, a week from now on Monday, you can write about it. You can't talk about it at all. Yeah. Post at 5 p.m. Pacific on Monday

and not before that. So you have a week to think about it and write about it and all of that. And what they did this time is they just gave it to people and said, here you go. There's no embargo. And I mean, I had that happen to me a couple of times. The original iPad sort of worked like that with me where I got it before it came out after the first reviews had dropped and there was no embargo. And no embargo, if you're a journalist, is in some ways the worst because you end up in that rush where you start to think, well, I should just start writing words now. I And then you posted that story. And it got great response because it was even after all of those, like several months since the product came out, your perspective was unique and interesting. And the fact that time had passed didn't change that at all. No. And you know what? I think it, as you said, I think it actually augmented it because at that point I had basically been drawing on the iPad Pro and writing on the iPad Pro every day, give or take a couple of days since November. And I have a huge backlog of sketches and paper. And it was from that that I was actually able, you know, I did the entire, the entire review was not only done with the pencil, but it was done in paper. And I put it together in paper and Pixelmator

and then uploaded it using a workflow script. So it was all done and processed and built on the iPad Pro. And I wouldn't have been able to trust myself to lay it out on the iPad. I would have maybe like drawn sketches in November and then I would have thrown it to my Mac and like done Photoshop to put it into panels. But because I had been working for so many months at that time, you know, three or four, just solely on the iPad Pro, I felt comfortable enough to say, okay, you know what, I'm going to do this, you know, long form comic style. And I'm going to look at, you know, I had a couple of comics kind of as reference points of like, how do you do this when you want to do kind of like a pseudo infographic? And how do you position things? Because paper doesn't really allow you to move

things from, from canvas to canvas, you have some limited tools, but you can't really be like, oh, yeah, I didn't put this in the right position. So I'm just going to highlight it and move it. It doesn't it doesn't quite work as well as you might otherwise want it to. So I'm really grateful that I that I took the time. I was going to do it like two weeks after release. And then I got sick. And I'm glad that me getting sick forced me to actually take some time and like focus on the way to use it. But yeah, but now so many more people are going to get to use the pencil. Well, this is one of the things I think is really also interesting is that your timing ended up

being great because it came right in advance of this. And if we think back to that shortage, like you said of us, like, you know, you bought a pencil and sent it to Mike because Mike couldn't get a pencil. And so many people were frustrated by it. And I have to wonder if this was maybe even Apple's, even Apple sort of anticipated this, which is we got to get the pencil up to speed. We're not going to be able to make enough of them right out of the gate but the ipad pro 12.9 inch is also not going to be the highest volume product in the ipad line at all so whether it was planned or not the bottom line is they got to ship that pencil and get uh supplies uh filling in in retail for a few months before they launched this 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which I would think is going to sell way more Apple Pencils than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro was ever going to sell

because it is cheaper and it is the understandable size, the size we all expect for an iPad. And so it's really good timing not just for your review but for like the fact that they seem to now be able to make ipad or make apple pencils fast enough to meet this new demand because i think it's going to be huge demand for that pencil from now on i i would be really shocked if we didn't see the ipad uh the pencil go into shortage again after the ipad gets the release i hope they've just been stocking them like more more pencils we need to stock but yeah sadly i didn't go i i should have uh planned in anticipation and just bought a bunch I hope they've just been stocking them like more pencils, more pencils. We need to stock. Yeah, sadly, I didn't go.

I should have planned in anticipation and just bought a bunch of pencils. But no, I think this is going to be huge for people who have been interested in trying out the Apple Pencil. It's funny because every time I take my iPad out, I've been I was traveling, of course, for the for the Apple event. And before that, we both were at the Yosemite conference and I had to fly out for there. Every time I've been in the airport, I usually doodle while waiting for flights just because it's a nice, like, de-stressing opportunity. And every single time people lean over and be like, what tablet is that? What stylus is that? And I'm like, it's an iPad.

It's a pencil. And they're like, is that that? I didn't realize it was so good. Like it really, the thing about the pencil that really to this, to four months later, sticks with me is you, you can't really anticipate or believe how good it is until you see it in person. Because I feel like we have been trained for years to assume that, you know, when someone says they have the best digital stylus yet, which I'm using air quotes on this podcast, which I think is hilarious. Yeah, podcast air quotes.

Yeah, podcast air quotes. When somebody says that, you go, you roll your eyes a little bit and go like, okay, but yeah, I've tried a bunch of styluses and they're good, but nothing really replicates the sense of a normal pen. Like you get to a 1 to 10 scale, you get to about 7.5 with 98% of the high-end stylus market. Even the Surface Pro, I did a lot of sketching with the Surface Pro 3 when it first came out being like, maybe I should get a Surface because I really want a portable sketchbook. out being like, maybe I should get a Surface because I really want a portable sketchbook. And even the Surface Pro is just not, it's just the pen, the N-Trigg series is just not, doesn't feel natural. And the pencil, in contrast, is one of those crazy wacky things where, especially when you pair it with something like either notes or paper, because those software tools are so good, using the pencil feels almost

seamless. Like, no, it doesn't feel like paper. You know, we've talked about this a little bit. It doesn't feel like paper on glass. And they're not going to be able to do that until they figure out some magic wizardry with haptics. But the actual quality of your line work and the quality of your handwriting, I don't know if you found this, but for me, it's very, very similar to how I draw on paper. Oh, yeah. Yeah. My handwriting is just as exactly as terrible as it is in real life. But it is exact. Like I did a thing where I took some notes on a virtual sheet of paper using, I think, OneNote or maybe it was just the Notes app. And I looked at it later and I was like, yep, that is it. That's what a notebook in my college binder would have been

like, just as incomprehensible, but no different. And the experience of writing was no different. It feels very natural, which is totally what Apple is going for with that product. Oh, yeah. I mean, it got a lot of flack in the early days about being, oh, the pencil is too long, or why doesn't the pencil have an eraser, or the pencil have buttons? And as somebody, you know, I've drawn with Wacom tablets. I've drawn with the Surface Pro pens and Ntrig pens

and too many iPad styluses to count. Oh, yeah. And all of them, especially the ones with buttons, just feel terrible in your hand after about an hour. You get cramps. You'll pinch your skin on buttons. It's not a comfortable drawing experience. And the pencil, you know, would I love an undo button?

Sure. Would it be nice to have an eraser on the end of my pencil? Yeah, it might be nice. But overall, I think they made the perfect design compromises on that thing. It's just, it feels so good in your hand and it feels so good to draw and write with that I am really hoping that they boost this up even further when they start selling the Baby Pro, as I've been calling it internally at iMore. I really hope they almost do like Apple Store demos

where they really like encourage, they put out more pencils. I think they had one or two in the Apple Store near my house, but I really hope they just put pencils all over the table for people to draw with. It could be like at the bank. They can just have that little metal chain that comes out. Oh my gosh, the 21st century metal chain.

Okay, well, we've got a lot more to talk about about the ipad pro but i want to take uh take our first sponsor break and and let people know about this is the part where mike would come in and explain things but he's not here so it's going to be me telling you that this episode of upgrade is brought to you by pdf pen pro from smile now pdf pen is the swiss army knife for pdfs and p. And PDF Pen Pro is the ultimate multi-tool. It's a knife with so many tools it can barely even fit in your pocket. PDF Pen Pro has everything you need. It includes adding signatures, editing text and images.

You can perform OCR on scanned documents, export out to Microsoft Word format if you've got somebody who demands a particular file format and those types of demanding people. It's always a Microsoft Office format. Funny that. Only with PDF Pen Pro can you create an interactive PDF form, build a table of contents, set document permissions, and convert websites to multi-page PDFs. This is all happening on your Mac. Okay. So, PDF Pen Pro 7.

Easy export to Excel, PowerPoint, PDF archive formats, and you can even add tooltips to your PDFs for voiceover accessibility so your documents can be accessible as well. The list of features goes on and on. This is an amazingly powerful piece of software, and you can try the free demo of it today so you don't even have to worry about what you're getting yourself in for. There's a free demo with the power of PDF pen pro seven. Here's where you need to go smile software.com slash upgrade that smile software.com slash upgrade. Now PDF pen pro seven requires Yosemite or later, but it also works great on El Capitan. PDFs make the world go round. I do this all the time. I am sending PDFs to Mike and Steven at Relay. My wife is making PDFs for our invoices, for our business. It's funny, we were just talking about drawing things using the Apple Pencil. What is the paper of the 21st century? I've got to say, it's kind of PDFs. But perhaps we need to start turning all our sketches into PDFs too. It is important to have a tool that can let you do what you need to do with the PDF file format as well as converting to others.

PDF Pen Pro 7 is that tool. So thank you so much to Smile for sponsoring this show and all of Relay FM. Smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. Okay. We got some questions in the Ask Upgrade box this week. Questions. Okay, we got some questions in the Ask Upgrade box this week. Questions.

People knew that you were going to be on, and they had some questions, and a lot of them, unsurprisingly, are about the pencil and about the iPad and how they interact. The first one is fascinating. It's almost like a litmus test. It says, as Serenity is an avid Apple Pencil user, is she tempted by the 9.7-inch iPad Pro for better portability? This is the big question, right? What are your feelings now, now that you have the choice of the 12.9 or the 9.7? What are you thinking in terms of what you're going to use? Oh, man, that is a choice. So if you had asked me this back in November before I got the big iPad Pro, I would have gotten the 9.7-inch iPad Pro in a heartbeat. Because I just thought the 12.9 was gigantic.

I was like, this feels like a tray to carry cookies out onto. It doesn't feel like a computer. But in the intervening months, having forced myself to use it as my main computer and also having unfortunately drowned my MacBook Air, and so it is now my only laptop-related computer, I can't see myself going to 9.7 for the things that I currently use my iPad for now. And for me, the really interesting thing on this scale is that before the iPad Pro, I had pretty much given up on my iPad. And I feel so horrible saying this, especially on relays, like if Federico was judging me. But no, I just had stopped. My iPad would sit there and I would use it for the occasional, you know, if I had to write a how-to about the iPad, but I wasn't really using it.

I would occasionally read on it. I have an iPad mini that's, you know, sitting in my bedroom that supposedly I use for reading e-books, but I just, I don't touch it because I've had, you know, I have the 6S and I was using the 6S Plus for a while. And that big screen, I was just like, well, I can do, you know, pretty much everything on the big iPhone. And carrying around the 9.7-inch iPad and a MacBook Air is too heavy. And so I had just – it had wound up on the shelf. And I felt so bad. I'm like, this beautiful iPad Air 2, it's such a good computer. And I've been doing nothing with it.

this beautiful iPad Air 2. It's such a good computer. And I've been doing nothing with it. And when the iPad Pro came out, I was deeply afraid that that was going to happen with the iPad Pro, that I was going to buy this $1,100, $1,200 tablet, and then just put it on the shelf again. So I was really concerned. Like, it was very much a like, I need to use this. I need to prove to myself that I'm not putting down this money in vain just for kicks and that it's going to sit on the shelf. And the pencil honestly was a huge factor in why I didn't put down the iPad Pro. But also forcing myself to actually relearn my workflows, which I had been resisting for the longest time with my 9.7 inch iPad. for the longest time with my 9.7-inch iPad. Learning all of those workflows and getting comfortable with the idea of the iPad as my only computer on the road really sort of reinvented how I used an iPad.

And once I got comfortable with the 12.9-inch iPad, I found it really, really hard to go back to friends' 9.7-inch iPads. And even, you know, I have the air too. And I even tried to, to move my workflow over to the 9.7 inch iPad air in the, in the thought of like, well, maybe there will be a smaller iPad pro in the future. And I found it very difficult because it's, there's just so something really nice about having almost full screen side-by-side apps on the iPad pro the extra workspace, especially when you're doing things that go beyond drawing and email communication and the occasional, you know, video. When you're trying to do heavy-duty productivity, I really appreciate the extra screen space. And also,

I do a lot of photo editing at iMore, especially when I'm doing for, you know, hero images or I'm taking device shots. And once I figured out a photo workflow that worked well for me with the iPad Pro, the idea of moving that to a smaller screen meant losing space for my tools and space for me to be able to pan my canvas around where I just have to, you know, zoom in and do more panning than I would otherwise have to do with the 12 inch tablet. So that's the long winded version of saying I, I am tempted by the 9.7 inch iPad Pro, I did get one, I got the base, the base 599 Wi Fi model in rose gold just to try it as a drawing tablet. And I'm going to be doing sort of a versus artistry review. But I overall, I think I'm sticking with my 12.9.

I'm with you. I am intrigued by the stuff that the 9.7 inch has to offer. And I think for most people, it's probably the right choice. But and I'm right there with you in thinking that back when the 12.9 came out of thinking, well, come on, you know, this is interesting, but the real winner is going to be when these features make it to the regular iPad size. But since I, since I used as listeners of this show, no, since I started using, I use the review model. I had that for a month or so. And then, and then in, you know, mid to late December, I just, um, bought, uh, bought one, right? I mean, it was just like, no, no, this is it. This is it. And then, and my, um, my MacBook Air is still around and I actually use it occasionally when there's something very specific that I need to do with it. But, um, it doesn't,

it doesn't get used very often. It's sort of just been replaced by this 12.9-inch iPad Pro. And so, yeah, side-by-side apps or even slide over or the little or the narrow and the wide sort of two-thirds, one-thirds view. There's so much flexibility with that screen. It's such a big, beautiful screen. It's very hard to give that screen. It's such a big, beautiful screen. It's very hard to give that up. And although I really appreciate the lightness of the 9.7-inch iPads, because boy. Oh, gosh. It does feel like you're holding nothing, like a piece of paper. Yeah. Especially after you've spent some time building up your iPad muscles with the 12.9-inch, you go back to the 9.7, and the new iPad Pro feels just like the old

iPad Air 2. It's like there's nothing there, which is great. But then I look at the screen, then I look at the keyboard. I have issues with the on-screen keyboard of the iPad Pro. But when I go back to a regular size iPad and I look at that keyboard, I literally think, what are you kidding? There are no numbers or symbols here, and I'm going to have to keep toggling all of the little shift buttons to get all the characters I need? Come on, right? And so, yeah, it's not going to happen for me. But I do, you know, I think we're outliers i suspect i think that the 12.9 is always going to be a product for a very specific kind of user that you know we're going to be in that happy niche of you know 10 or 15 or whatever

that percentage is but not you know not 60 of ipads and that's fine it's fine well it's it's quite literally a legitimately a pro product like the 12.9.9 inch iPad is really for people who need the extra screen space and who really need the larger iPad. And in my opinion, are probably choosing to choose to take that as their only portable device as opposed to dual wielding an iPad or a laptop. And that's granted that's still in sort of like a semi-pro category. The big thing I think you touched on it about the keyboard, I think is, is really important because one of the, one of the concerns I had with a 9.7 inch iPad pro, especially having, after having gotten used to the full size, beautiful keyboard that exists both on the smart keyboard and on the Logitech create, which is a third-party smart connector keyboard.

Yeah. I haven't gotten a chance to personally type on the 9.7-inch smart keyboard, but boy, I watched Rene type on that thing, and I had him specifically take some side-by-side videos. And I'm looking at that, and I'm like, my fingers are pretty tiny, but that still looks awfully cramped and awfully not fun to type on. It's funny. So that keyboard, they've tried.

They tried really hard to try and make the minimization of the standard, like the QWERTY keys as limited as as possible i guess i would say so like the the ipad pro 12.9 inch smart cover keyboard uh has sort of gaps on the sides the gaps are totally gone like it's it goes right up to the edge with the keys and the modifier keys are the ones that get shrunken down the most you know your your your returns and shifts that are usually double or triple wide of a standard key are all kind of smooshed to narrower because they're trying to minimize those sizes and give more room for the regular letter keys. But in the end, you know, yeah, it's shrunken down. And some people, I think it really is going to come down to something that most people aren't even aware of, which is how they type.

You know, how can they adapt spatially to the location of keys or how locked in are they? And I know that my typing style, I am locked into the location of the keys. And I tried with a netbook at one point to type on a shrunken down keyboard and it was just a disaster. I couldn't adapt and it also ruined my regular typing because then I was completely at sea about where the keys were going to be. And so I think for some people,

it's going to be fantastic and for other people, it's going to be not optimal experience, but people are going to have to go. I mean, I say this about a lot of these products, but this is one of those products that you would be much better off going to an Apple store and trying and seeing if it's something you're going to like, or making sure that you, you know, and being emotionally prepared that you might need to return it if it doesn't, if it doesn't work for

you. That said, it's so much lighter than the equivalent product on the big iPad pro. And I think that is a win for it because I don't really love the keyboard cover on the big iPad Pro. And I think that is a win for it because I don't really love the keyboard cover on the big iPad Pro because it is so heavy because just because of the size of it and the span of the keyboard. And this one, because it's way scaled down, is a lot lighter and it does not feel as much of a burden. And, and so I think on that level, it's way less intrusive, if you can get used to typing on it, which is, you know, I think some people are going to love it. And then other people are going to be like, Nah, I can't at all, because it's not a full size keyboard. Yeah, it's a trade off. You know, if it's if you're not going to be spending your entire day

typing on the iPad, or if you feel comfortable being able to use software keyboards occasionally, then that might, you know, that might be the perfect solution for you. But if you're an avid typer, you're going to need to try it. Yeah. And, and I, so I talked to Apple today about a bunch of stuff and it's a bank background briefing. So I'm not going to like give a direct quotes and tell you who I talked to, but I got, I got some of this stuff. And I asked about the smart connector. And I think it's really interesting that I said, am I missing something? Or are there only three products that use the smart connector? And they said, nope, you're not missing anything. There literally are these two keyboard covers and that Logitech Create keyboard.

And so this is the real question is what is going on? And apparently there are some other things that are in development. It'll be interesting to see, but there's been, I feel like there's a real space between the keyboard cover. And I mean, when we were at the Yosemite conference, I saw you there with your Logitech create on your iPad pro, and it basically turns it into a laptop. It's kind of amazing what it does. The downside of that is that it's sort of locked in and you got to kind of do some stuff to pop it back out. It's so heavy. You know, it's not even the fact that you have to pop it out because I figured out a

good like one, two movement for that. A little kung fu for the iPad Pro. Well, and the thing, the Create is such a heavy cover or like a sturdy cover that I can, you know, I can fling it across the room with my iPad in there and it would probably protect my iPad. But it is, it is heavy. It turns it into a, into a laptop that basically weighs, I think, just under three pounds. And, you know, I haven't carried a three pound laptop in a while, but I haven't, the, the trade-off, the beauty of how comfortable those keys are, it's basically a full-size keyboard with a function row and all of the functions map to iPad functions.

You can get Spotlight search really quickly or you can go back to your home screen. That's really nice. That whole row of keys that's not on the Apple keyboard. I know. And that makes me so sad because Apple actually had room on that keyboard for a function row and they chose not to. But, you know, that keeps me with that awful keyboard case. That Create, but that is not the smart keyboard cover. And I don't know what that product is or if it will ever exist. But you would think there could be something in the middle there. There are enough smart, enterprising Apple third-party manufacturers that I would hope that someone is working on something that's essentially the smart keyboard with a home row and a back cover.

Yeah, something that you can pop in and pop back out fairly quickly. There was one other piece of feedback that I wanted to get now before we go into our next segment that was from listener Justin that is related to the keyboard thing, which is, can you type with the iPad Pro smart cover on your lap? I don't know if you've tried this with the iPad Pro. I have. cover on your lap i don't know if you've tried this with uh with the ipad pro um i have uh and the answer there is yes question mark uh but it's kind of tenuous i i've done it but it's not like um like serenity's uh create keyboard where that then it's just rock solid it's like you're using a laptop i love it and with the with i i don't find it comfortable. I find it doable, but you kind of have to brace yourself and provide some extra stability in your lap to, to keep it from tilting over because it's not, you know, it's not like what you expect from a laptop, but it can be done. I feel like this is what all the people who used the Surface said a similar thing.

It's like, yeah, kind of. But it's not ideal. I mean, I don't think it's I don't prefer to work with a iPad Pro smart cover in my lap typing like I would with my laptop. I would do something else. I would get my laptop. I would move somewhere else. Or actually, last week I wrote an article, my column for Macworld last week, I wrote just on the glass of the iPad Pro screen and just did that. And actually, you know, it was pretty good. It worked

pretty well. And, you know, similarly, I have to sort of like find a position with my knees where I can have the right angle of the iPad and my hands on the keyboard to get that to work. But I was able to do that. And honestly, I would rather do that, I think, than use the smart cover just because it's a little too rickety. It's rickety on a desk. That's the thing that I don't like about it.

Even when you're typing on it, what feels like a solid surface, you get a lot of vibration and you get a lot of movement. It's true and again i understand the compromise because you want a thin keyboard and you want it to be functional but you don't want it to be super bulky and the create is definitely bulky it is it is definitely not a not a slim uh slim design on an otherwise beautiful ipad. But I'm okay with that. I think maybe on the 9, I haven't spent much time with the 9.7, so I'll have to check back for Justin on that. My guess is, because like I said about the weight,

because everything is lighter, that the 9.7 might actually feel a lot more stable on your lap. Although again, you're going to be typing, it's that smaller keyboard, so you're going to have typing, it's, you know, that smaller keyboard. So you're gonna have to see my, my go-to right now is an external Bluetooth keyboard. I'm actually using the magic keyboard right now. And a stand. And that's my go-to for the iPad pro. If I'm writing something is I prefer just using that, just using the external keyboard where it becomes

a problem is in, in those situations where I want the traditional, you know, why they call a laptop a laptop. I actually want it sitting in my lap. And I don't have a solution that feels super comfortable. The Create from Logitech would be the best one right now. I also wonder if, I guess you can't, I was thinking, could you like, I don't know, could you like use tape or something and stick a 9.7 inch iPad Pro inside that Logitech Create? Yeah, you could. It's the same connector. Yeah, it is the same connector.

The problem is the sheath. So the one thing that I don't like about the Create is that it only has one fixed angle. And the way that works is basically having the iPad snapped in. That's not going to work. is basically having the iPad snapped in. It's not going to work. However, yes, I can't say anything for certain, but Logitech's website certainly hints that baby pro users will be very happy soon.

Well, I mean, that was the hint that I got from Apple too, is that there are other products in the pipeline that use the smart connector, and they would know because it's part of the made for iPhone. The made for iPhone, yeah. Program. To get access to the smart connector, it's like getting access to lightning or the old iPod connectors. You go through Apple and they've got a spec and a developer agreement.

And so more is coming. And that'll be good to see. I'd imagine it's going to be just like we've seen with some other stuff, including from Apple, that there will be way more variety in accessories for the 9.7 inch ipad pro than for the 12.9 like you can only get three colors of of cover for the for the 12.9 and the 9.7 is like we have all the colors so many colors i'm jealous i'm seriously jealous i want a color a colored cover and i can't get marigolds they're so nice i know mine is gray it is gray and boring yeah that's that, that's the downside. Gray or white smart keyboard.

Yeah. No, no, no thank you. It's after Labor Day. I can't. I just can't. Yeah, we've wrapped back around. The one thing I will say about the Baby Pro is that you should be able to use the 12.9-inch smart keyboard with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. It'll look a little weird. Super weird, but it should work. I'm going to try that out. I haven't had a chance, but it should work because

it's all the same, right? Yeah, yeah. You just couldn't really use it as a cover. No, as a cover, it wouldn't work well. But if you're looking for like, I need a light smart connector keyboard, but I don't want to use something as tiny as the 9.7 inch it's possible yeah don't do that you totally could do that but i i don't think i can i don't think i can recommend it um okay we've got even more to talk about uh about the ipad and other stuff uh that was launched last week but i want to take a break to tell you about our second sponsor it's it pro tv if you've got a career plan that you need to set in motion whether you're starting a career in IT or you're already an IT person in the field and want to get ahead, certifications and credentials are a key way to get a job or a promotion. ITProTV's mission is education through engagement. They have up-to-date, high-quality video content, access to the most important tools you need for technology certification.

They have more than 1,000 hours of content. They're adding 50 hours a week. So the number keeps going up and up and up. They do something really interesting. They stream their courses live. But they're also available on demand. But they do like live shows, their model is sort of like to be like a live TV network of IT information. And then it's all made available on demand. And it goes to all sorts of devices. For a while now, they've been streaming to Chromecast, Roku, PC, iOS, and Android devices. But now they're also available on the Amazon Fire TV and the fourth generation Apple TV. So you can get them pretty much anywhere in your living room, on your mobile device, at your desk. You name it, you can get ITProTV access.

They've got lots of different topics, including ones that listeners to the show will probably be interested in Apple certified support professional, Apple certified technical coordinator, Amazon Web Services, Google Apps for Work administrator and a whole lot more. They've got an ethical hacking deep dive. They've got courses on security and cryptography. They've got engaging tutorials about all of this stuff. They transcribe all their courses. So you can either watch from start to finish or just jump to the part that you're looking for, learn something and then jump back and apply what you've learned into the real world. ITProTV includes over 100 step-by-step virtual machine labs, so much more. And it's all for one low monthly subscription price. There's a no hassle cancellation policy as well. So if

you're done with it, you can just walk away. You don't have to feel like you're going to be trapped if you try it out. If you're studying with a book or enrolled in certification or technical degree program, it's a great supplement. And you can also learn at your own pace and track your progress and way cheaper than going to an IT bootcamp. So if you're a working IT professional, it's a great ongoing resource. And corporate and group pricing is also available. Clients for ITProTV include Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and most importantly, my alma mater, the University of California at San Diego. Yes, that's right.

Triton Power. So check it out. ITPro.TV slash upgrade is where you need to go to boost your brain with the most popular IT certifications. Premium subscriptions are normally $57 a month or $570 for a full year. But here's a special offer. You can try it free for seven days when you sign up using code upgrade 30. That's upgrade followed by the number 30. And you can check out all their courses, check out the live stream a lot more. And then you'll

get 30% off of everything for the lifetime of your account with ITProTV. Now that's a deal. That makes it less than $40 a month or $3.99 for an entire year's worth of content. Don't forget to mark your calendar. Their CCMP security courses are streaming live for the first time beginning now. So go to ITPro.TV slash upgrade and use the code upgrade30. Try it free for seven days and 30% off forever. Thanks to ITProTV for sponsoring. Upgrade. Hooray. I got a UCSD mention in there. I always like that.

I don't think they were pandering to me when they stuck it in there. That was actually one of their examples. And I've raised my eyebrow and said, why UCSD, you say? You can make it personal. Yeah, it's pretty great. People never know where,

like my college is not one that anybody's ever heard of. So that's kind of fun to have it be referenced there. I think they shot part of like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes on my college campus. That's like our claim to fame. It's not very famous. So Lister Krishna wrote in and wanted to ask how the drawing on the 9.7 and 12.9 models vary, if anything. Is there any lag issues? Are there any differences? I don't know. It seems to me like they're basically identical. Is that

what you've heard or seen? Yeah. So I, again, just like the- You're going to defer to Rene. So you're in the room with it, but Rene would not let you touch it. Or if he did, you couldn't admit it. Yeah, I could not. He did some extensive tests at my request, and it looks identical, honestly. It doesn't look like there's any difference. There's any differentiation in lag, any differentiation in mapping. I think you'll get just as smooth lines and just as nice handwriting as you would on the bigger model. I can't say this 100% for sure because I still want to run some tests when I get my model on Thursday, but that is definitely something that I'm going to be looking into.

Great. Yeah. I mean, my impression is the same, which is I think this is intended to be an identical experience, but I'm sure you will ferret out any changes as you go. If anybody can, you can. Also wanted to know, listener Mark wrote in to say, Serenity, will we see more iPad experiment and art articles from you in the future?

Do you have an inclination to get, do you have some ideas about where you're going with your iPad and pencil stuff? Oh, yes. Okay, so we'll definitely see some more articles. I'm actually, I have one coming out this week that's the best handwriting apps. I've been testing them for the last two weeks.

Oh, nice. So we've got some really really good ones in there. And then I'm also going to be doing, as I think I mentioned earlier in the podcast, an artist's review of the 9.7 inch iPad and a head-to-head. I might also revisit my Microsoft Surface comparison,

pitting the Surface head to head against the 9.7 inch iPad and seeing if there's any change, any difference. Okay, so a lot for Mark and the rest of us to look forward to. Oh, yeah. Very nice. I thought as much, but that was a good opportunity to plug that. Can you tell me the story about you drowning your MacBook Air? I don't think I've heard this one, and I'm horrified.

What did you do? What did you do? This was the mistake where Serenity has been a college professor this semester, which has been really exciting and a big sort of opening of things I know how to do and things I'm still learning how to do. Unfortunately, one of my office hour sessions involved me bringing both my iPad Pro and my MacBook Air to consult with a student. And we were working on some HTML. And unfortunately, there happened to be an open water bottle sitting right in between both models. So I can't say for sure that the iPad Pro

knocked over the water bottle onto the MacBook Air, but essentially at one point there was no water on my MacBook and then there was water on my MacBook. So sadly, and the worst part, it wasn't even a lot of water. It wasn't, you know, I've seen horrible, you know, complete drownings where you just like give up and you say, well, that's that's gone. Everything everything's ruined now. This was just enough water for me to be slightly concerned, but not so much that I was like,

oh, no, everything, you know, everything is awful. So but because I was at the college that I'm teaching at currently, I had nothing but some paper towels from the ladies' room to try and mop it up with. And I just – there was no way to properly save it. And it booted that evening, and I turned it off, and then the next morning I could not get it to plug in. And it's been sitting sadly on my – yeah. Yeah, poor thing. It was just over a year old..i.p macbook air i might take him i might take it to a to a genius bar at some point to see just how terrible the damage is but i'm

i'm pretty sad that macbook airs have been my computer since 2010 wow feels like the end of a legacy i i i yeah i I feel really uncomfortable now. I feel really bad. Because I love my MacBook Air, too, even though I don't use it like I used to. It's like I'm very attached to those computers. And, you know, this is not the first time I think many podcast listeners have heard about somebody spilling water on a MacBook Air and ruining it, Casey Liss. But, boy, it happens, right? It does. Why have we not see

this is something that maybe apple needs to work on does the i don't know if the the the macbook the adjectiveless macbook uh is any different in this regard but at some point shouldn't they have some kind of guard under the keyboard to prevent a little water spill from destroying an entire computer shouldn't that happen? I would really hope so. It can't be that. Well, it's going to be difficult because they haven't done it yet. But, you know, I don't even think it was the keyboard that ruined me.

I think it was the rear ports where the fans and the exhaust. Because I think a couple of water droplets got in the back there and then I just couldn't clean them out because that hinge is right there. got in the back there and then i just couldn't clean them out because that hinge that hinge is right there but yeah i i really hope computers are so important and you know they've they've gotten very good at making ipads and iphones less vulnerable to catastrophic spills it helps very much that there are very few places for water to enter inside your iPad or iPhone, short of dunking it into, say, a large body of water or toilets. You're usually safe if you accidentally get some water droplets on the screen. But with a Mac, I just feel if it's anything more than like six or seven droplets of rain, you're screwed.

You're sad. Well, I'm glad you got your iPad Pro to help you through this. Oh, gosh. Yeah, it has been an adventure in can I live without a portable laptop? And so far, the answer is yes. Although I definitely missed it a little bit when covering the event last week. Yeah, well, that was one of the times when I actually got the MacBook Air out. A couple people asked about this, like, do I cover those events with the iPad Pro now? And the answer is absolutely not iPad Pro with any kind of other keyboard in your lap rickety at best but um I also like to take pictures and tweet some of them out during the during the live event and I have no way of doing that in an iOS workflow at this point I mean I guess I could uh be constantly switching memory cards and importing photos and all that but I've

got an I've got a an aperture uh tethered shooting your workflow scripting workflow that is super like set up and it's just it's all ready to go and uh so you put those two things together that the all the photography stuff is already built in i've already built it all and it gives me a stable place to type in my lap while i'm sitting in those super cramped seats at town hall. And yeah, absolutely. I just, it actually felt weird though, that I went down there and I didn't have my iPad Pro in my bag.

I only had the MacBook Air. And that was a weird feeling because I've kind of come to be, to expect the iPad Pro to always be there. And then occasionally also the MacBook Air. It didn't happen. Yeah. And they're still, they're still just too big to carry both of them around. Although that was my folly. I carried

both around and it was sad. I do that too. My bag doesn't like that, right? Because bags aren't really made for two devices of that size. They expect you to only have the one. I also tried the, I should mention, I tried that adapter, that USB, the powered USB adapter this week, and I wrote about

that on Six Colors, which is one more piece. By the way, your iMore colleague, Renee Ritchie, is the person who started the applause for the announcement by Phil Schiller that podcast microphones can now be powered by this adapter because it gets power from the lightning port. Oh, I was so, so happy to hear a shout out to podcasters. Hopefully that means dual stream audio is coming in iOS 10. Yeah, that's the next, the other, the other shoe to drop is some solution and software so you can capture audio on one app while another app is also

using the audio input. And hopefully that'll happen. But it is, I was able to attach a USB ethernet adapter. And although there was no user interface for ethernet on ios it worked so obviously like if you have a dhcp network and you attach an ethernet adapter and you turn off your wi-fi um it works like it it just figures oh okay i've got this ethernet device i guess i'll use that as my network interface and i went through settings and i was looking is there some like special thing that has appeared or something nope there was no sign that I was on the network at all in any of the settings apps or anything, but I was on the network. So for all I know, that's been the case for a while now, but I'd never really even thought to try that. And it totally worked. And I was able

to power the Yeti USB microphone that couldn't be powered before. I was able to power my USB Pre-2, the box, the USB box that I use that I attach my XLR microphones to, like the one I'm talking in now. That one worked with it just fine. So, you know, yeah, it's, and more to the point, it powers your device while you're using an external device. This isn't just about stunts, too. It's also about stuff that could be powered by the old adapter. The old adapter was just a USB plug, right? So like Marco Armin, it kind of came up with this thing that I use, too, which is you could do like a live audio stream like we do at Relay and the Incomparable.

And you could do it from an iPad or an iPhone using this USB audio device. It was super clever. You attach the audio box to your mixer, and then you just push a button on this one app on your iPhone or your iPad, and you're streaming live from anywhere. It's a really very clever idea. The problem is you better have a full battery

when you start that because it has to do all of that work without being plugged in because there's no power and this new adapter that goes away like you you can do stuff that involves usb like if you want to work all day on an ipad pro attached to your your special corporate ethernet network let's say you could do it because it's also receiving power so you know other before it would have been like, well, I can use Ethernet, but I gotta let my battery run down while I do it.

And then I can not use Ethernet and plug it in. Anyway, so I was very happy to get that adapter last week. And it does everything Phil Schiller said it would do. Just another- Thanks, Phil Schiller. Yeah, it was nice. Well, something I think for all of us too, who have used those USB adapters in the past and felt like we were getting away with something. Like, well, you can, but it's only a matter of time before Apple realizes that this is stupid.

They take it away, yeah. And they take it away. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. And now they've made it a good reason or a good mill ground for people who do want to use non-camera related activities on their adapters. Have you tried the new USB-C 29 watt adapter? Because I'm waiting for my cord to try that out. I haven't.

I haven't. I don't have that adapter and I don't have a USB-C to lightning cord, so I haven't tried it. Although it sounds like that is only for us. It's only for 12.9-inch iPad Pro people. It is. We got one new thing. Well, technically, we got two new things, 12.9-inch iPad Pro users or soon-to-be users. If you haven't bought a 12.9-inch iPad Pro yet, iPad Pro users or soon-to-be users, if you haven't bought a 12.9-inch iPad Pro yet, you can get a 256-gig version. You guys suck. That's awesome.

But also, yeah, you can get a USB-C to lightning cable and plug it into this beautiful... I'm holding the 29-watt adapter. I bought the adapter when I was down in Cupertino, but I couldn't buy the cord. So I ordered the cord online, and I'm like, well, I have the adapter in hand

and hopefully the cord will come soon. Someday. Someday soon. And they'll do the super fast charging, which is cool. And I guess the other thing that 12.9 has going for it, and Jeff Carlson wrote about this on his website, is it's the one that does USB 3. Yes, this is also true. The RAM and the USB 3 speeds are really important if you're planning

on using your iPad as a photography device, which is interesting. So I think the breakdown for iPad, at least internally at Apple, my guess is, well, the 9.7-inch iPad is the iPad that you film with, and the 12.9-inch iPad is thead that you offload film and photography to because uh the the 9.7 inch ipad great cameras but still usb2 speeds which is not not terrible speeds just not uh not quite nearly as good as usb3 as jeff carlson points out in that in that wonderful article uh whereas the usb3 speeds on the 12.9 inch pro are awesome and you have that big beautiful screen but you have a slightly terrible cam more terrible camera and honestly why would you want to film with a 12.9 inch tablet it's too big right right

it's um what's the other thing the other thing we've got is well we should talk about the ram so listener i'll move this up from our Ask Upgrade segment. Bruce, listener Bruce said, is the two gigs of RAM in the new iPad Pro a worry compared to the original? I think it's a good question. And I think there's more tests that need to be done. My understanding is one of the things about how these, how iPads work is that the video RAM is shared memory. And so you actually, on a smaller screen, there's less memory usage for video. And there are many fewer pixels on the 9.7 inch than on the 12.9 inch. So one argument would be, and I think this is the argument maybe Apple would like to make, but can't quite, is that

because it's a smaller screen, the effect of using it compared to the other one in terms of all the stuff you do isn't very different i suspect it is different you could find edge cases where you're going to definitely feel the the four gigs instead of the two gigs but um it's mitigated maybe somewhat by the the screen. That's the feeling I get. But I have not confirmed it, and I have to spend some time trying to, like, get iPads to do identical things and see if that Safari tab has to reload or not. Because it's hard to say right now. Yeah. Honestly, my biggest worry about 2 gigs versus 4 gigs of RAM, I have been doing a lot of heavy duty photo editing in uh with a 12.9

inch ipad pro and a decent amount of video editing uh both with pinnacle and with uh imovie and i have a feeling that that's where we'll also see a little bit of bottleneck because when you're working with dual stream 4k or high you, very high quality photos or trying to do excessive rendering. I do a lot of repair, repair tool action with Pixelmator. And it's pretty quick on the iPad Pro on the big iPad Pro. And I'm curious to see how long the same repair action will take on a 9.7 inch model. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, I guess we'll have to see. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is the stuff that really we got to, we we've got our, our guesses based on what we might've seen at the event or heard, but then there's all the stuff that you've got to, you got to test yourself.

Let's see. So we've got not a lot of time left. I want to go to AskUpgrade pretty soon. But are there any other things that came out of the Apple event last week that really struck you and that you'd like to chat about a little bit? Anything that you thought was interesting that maybe hasn't gotten the attention that it deserves? Yeah. I mean the iPhone SE I feel like is, you know, tenfold, whatever. It's fun. Five-inch or four-inch iPhone inch iphone yay return i'm sticking with my big one um it's a remix right it's like bits of bits of one phone in the body of another phone i think it's very

interesting for strategy reasons but technology wise it's not that interesting because it's stuff we've seen before it is and and i know people are going to be happy about it. The watch, I'm really excited. I'm wearing a nylon band right now, one of the new woven nylon bands. I really like it as a successor to the sport band. It doesn't get nearly as itchy as my sport. It breathes really well. And it looks really tacky in photographs. And then the second I actually put it on, I'm like, oh, okay, now I see what they're going for. And it looks a lot better a little bit. It is definitely swatch watchy. Like it's, it's definitely more silly and stylish than classy and stylish, but I definitely, you know, I'm, I'm definitely going to get a couple of colors of these and do a more in-depth review.

Cause I really like the way that they feel. Yeah, I'm looking forward to checking those out. I saw them in person at the event and they look good. I'm not sure it's my personal style, but they look better, I think, in person than they do in picture form. Yes, much better. I mean, that's my challenge when I review these is how am I going to photograph these

and make them actually look awesome? Because they do look awesome in reality, I think. The big one that I don't think is getting talked about a lot is the uh 9.3 of course got a huge preview but we didn't apple didn't really hype or put a lot of focus on the apple tv update 9.2 which i feel like has for people who have apple tvs or for people who are on the fence of getting Apple TVs. This is a huge update. This is an update that really brings some added functionality to the to the Apple TV,

especially where Siri is concerned, where, you know, you can now do Siri for dictation so you can you can search or enter in passwords. And for people wondering how Siri dictation works with passwords, it's not like you have to say your password and Siri has to interpret it. You say it one letter or one symbol or one character at a time, which works really well. I've done a bunch of testing on it and surprisingly well for that kind of searching. But you or for that kind of text entry. But you can also find apps on the App Store now.

If you speak Spanish, you can talk to Siri in Spanish and Siri will understand you. I feel like that's really helpful, especially because the remote, you know, there are some pluses and some minuses with the remote. They fixed one of my biggest complaints with the remote, which is now when you're watching a show, if you accidentally graze the touchpad, it's not going to immediately bring up the scrubber and move you from where you were watching in your show. I don't know if you've ever done that, Jason, but it was so miserable. It would sit next to me on the couch and then I'd brush it and it would move. Now you have to click the thing before, you have to physically depress it before it will bring up the scrubber

and then click it again to move it. There you go. That is so much better. Yeah, I just, I would have like people walk by the coffee table and brush against it and mess up the remote thing. I'm like, no, wait,

or you're picking it up to do something else. And it, yeah, so that's, no, it's funny. the remote thing i'm like no wait or you're picking it up to do something else and it yeah so that's no it it's it's funny i mean there are lots of rumors about what was happening with the apple tv and whether it had been built but then kind of like put in the fridge for a while um it's unclear i i've never heard definitively uh exactly what happened i'm sure it was complicated regardless. But what shipped was strangely incomplete in some ways. It felt like a product that on one level, the rumors had been they'd had it waiting to go for like a year, but on another level, it feels like it had taken them by surprise when it finally came out. And 9.2 software it seems like it's basically

where we expected it to be on day one and it just wasn't there on day one no i mean they had a lot they had a lot to do especially uh based on some of the similar rumors that i was hearing about how the the box is life i'm really glad of the things that they finally, they were on their roadmap. You know, it would have been nice for Siri and the Apple TV to have launched with spelling dictation or support for wireless keyboards. Or iCloud Photo Library, which is now available in full on your Apple TV. No more shared photos only. You can get any photo from your iCloud Photo Library if it's connected. You can organize your apps into folders just like on iOS,

although, yes, it's just as painful as iOS to organize. I don't know. I'm actually going to do sort of a re-review of the Apple TV a couple months later, and I'm really grateful that this software update came out because it shows to me that Apple is thinking seriously about the Apple TV. It has moved beyond hobby status. And you know, this is, you know, 9.2, arguably a minor update as far as all things concerned. 9.3, you know, introduced night shift, but arguably also a minor update. But sticking in all of this stuff for a minor you know 9x update for apple tv it makes me really

excited for what we might see at wwc or the fall for 10-0 yeah yeah i'm i'm boy wwc is going to be really interesting isn't it depending on like the future of of where they're taking the watch and what's going on with apple tv and then of going on with the Mac? Is the Mac going to get a new name? There's just a lot of stuff going on out there. It's, yeah, really interesting. Yeah. You want to answer some questions? Let's answer some questions. Some Ask Upgrade?

All right. It's time for Ask Upgrade. Ask Upgrade, as always, choo-choo-choo, lasers. Brought to you by MailRoute. Now, IT departments are always expected to do more and with less. Of course, 2016 is no different in that regard. This includes really important stuff like stopping spam and virus attacks from swamping your email server. There have also been a lot of end-of-life announcements for trusted hardware and software options.

That makes choosing the right tools for this even more difficult. Postini and MXLogic are saying goodbye. And so the question is, who can you trust to do the job well and stick around? The answer is people who live, breathe, and eat and sleep email. And that's MailRoute. MailRoute is not part of some sort of scheme to get you to buy into a whole bunch of different cloud services, and they throw in email stuff for free. That's not MailRoute. MailRoute is dedicated to one thing, protecting your email and your hardware against spam viruses and other attacks. You don't have to install any software or hardware. This is a cloud service. If you own your own domain, that's all you need to use MailRoute. You change

your MX records so that all the inbound mail for your domain coming from anywhere on the internet goes to MailRoute first. MailRoute takes it all in. They take the hit for you. They filter out all the bad stuff. And then they turn around and connect the good stuff to your mail server and send it all on your way. So the load on your mail server decreases dramatically because you don't have all these connections from weird places trying to send you things that nobody on your system actually wants. They've been focusing exclusively on email protection, the whole team since 1997. That's right. This is what they do. They've got an easy to use interface. It's full of admin tools. They've got an API, and it's all designed to

make your life spam free. They support LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, mailbagging, somewhere Mike is saying mailbagging right now, outbound relay, everything you'd want from the people handling your mail. And right now MailRoute is also offering price matching for McAfee and MXLogic customers. So stop spam today. Use MailRoute. You can get a free 30-day trial. So you can try it out. There's no risk to you.

Change your MX records. Point it at MailRoute. And if you don't like it, you just change it back and it's fine. You can go on with your life. Go to MailRoute. And if you don't like it, you just change it back and it's fine. You can go on with your life. Go to MailRoute.net slash upgrade. And I love these lifetime deals. Listeners of this show will get 10% off for the lifetime of their account with MailRoute by going to MailRoute.net slash upgrade or sending an email to sales at MailRoute.net.

MailRoute protects your email from spam viruses. That's it. That's what they do. That's all they do. And they do it better and have been doing it longer than anyone else. MailRoute.net slash upgrade. Thank you once again to MailRoute for supporting Upgrade, RelayFM, and AskUpgrade. I had to provide all the lasers this week, too.

It was not even in the budget. I broke the budget for that. That's okay. It was worth it. I think so. So here's some listeners. So listener Jan wrote in to say, iPad Pro is very expensive in Europe and storage upgrades too.

Could you cope with only 32 gigabytes? How would your usage change? What do you think about storage on iPad? I think you can probably cope with 32 gigabytes. You can certainly cope with it better than 16 gigabytes. But I tend to download a lot of apps because the iPad is a multipurpose device, right? You think about the kinds of things that you might do on an iPad and the storage worries get even larger. If you're watching video, that's going to be a chunk of things. If you're looking at photographs,

that's going to be a chunk of space. If you're downloading photographs to edit them, that's going to be a chunk of things. If you're looking at photographs, that's going to be a chunk of space. If you're downloading photographs to edit them, that's going to be a chunk. If you're drawing, that's talking, now you're talking about retina resolution drawings, which are going to take up space. And that's not even counting any games that you might want to play, or any, you know, traditional, like Facebook, or Tweetbot, or Snapchat. I don't know, do they make Snapchat for the iPad? I don't think so. That's not counting the social apps that you want to use. So my general inclination with the iPad is that bigger storage is better storage, especially if you're planning on doing multiple things. If you're maybe just focusing on videos or just focusing on storage, that might give you more leeway to do what you

want and to say, oh, well, you know, I'm only going to I'm only going to use the iPad for watching videos on the plane right now. So I don't need a whole lot of space. But if you're continually using it for a bunch of different things, I would lean towards higher storage tiers. Yeah, it depends. I mean, you can you can manage small storage, right? You can offload. Oh, you can. And I mean, every now and then I hear somebody say, oh, no, never. You always should have the most possible. It's like, I don't know. I think most, almost all use cases, you can get by with offloading things. But that said, there are specific reasons, right? If you travel, you want to load a specific reasons, right? Like, you know,

if you travel, you want to load a lot of movies on there. If you're doing things with huge video files or if I do podcast editing, right, those audio files are often quite huge too. But, but yeah, I think you can get by. I think it's one of those things. It's like you're paying for convenience in most cases of just like not having to worry about it, right? You download your apps and you don't have to worry about it. And I have the big iPad Pro too. And it feels good because I just don't even know honestly how much of the storage I'm using. But, you know, but I paid for it and I could probably have gotten by with less. I just decided to max it out.

Listener Hav, we've gone from Jan to Hav hav who actually these are both very short names that have special pronunciations i hope i got that right i think that's uh hav says should people with the ipad air 1 upgrade to the 9.7 ipad pro what do you think yes yes yes um i think that the ipad the original ipad air is still a pretty good machine. But the iPad Pro with the A9X and support for the pencil and the new speaker system and the True Tone display, which we didn't even really talk about in this episode. There's a lot of really, really awesome stuff that I think users who have been sitting with their old iPad for a couple years or more are going to be really, really excited to get to play with. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that if you've got, certainly before an iPad Air 1, you should absolutely look at this. This is going to be a way better product for you. And even the iPad Air 1 or 2, if you want to use the pencil,

especially, it's going to make a huge difference. Listener John wrote in to say, and knowing you were going to be on, what's the latest with iBooks Author? Has it gotten easier to use? It has. You know what? iBooks Author, the last major update iBooks Author had was last year. And a huge kind of improvement that they made was the ability to directly open EPUB files. So ebook files that you had maybe worked on or exported from a different service, you can then open and import into iBooks Author, which is pretty awesome. You still can't save iBooks

Author files as EPUBs, but the ability to import that without having to manually copy and paste stuff to build it for different formats is really cool. iBooks author still has some limitations. It's still, you know, all of the e-books building software, there's still no one perfect tool. But if you're looking for something that makes e-book building easy, especially if you're a new author who wants to do stuff with multimedia, I think it's gotten 1000 times easier to use since it was first debuted. It's kind of in. I'm wondering if they'll do something for it either this summer or this fall, though, especially with the excess that they the importance that they've placed on education recently with the iPad. Yeah, it's it's one of those products that it's just hanging around,

right? It's like not high profile at all, but it's out there. Somebody's still working on it. Got a team, a very small team, but it's a team. Yeah. That's good. Team means it's more than one. So that's nice. It's like I cracked the code there. You probably know the entire team by name don't you don't you i'm i will neither confirm fair enough uh listener devin wrote in to say do you think the apple watch 2 will accept og apple watch bands well put devin the og the og bands the original bands um What do you think? Yeah, I think they would be stupid not to.

The iPad, the Apple Watch at this point is just over a year old. Well, I guess just under, oh, no, just about a year old as of either two days ago, I think. I think it came March 24th last year. So just a year old now. Just over a year old. If they announce an Apple Watch 2, it's probably going to be either at DubDub or in September.

I'm leaning towards September right now. And I think they'll make it thinner, but they've given themselves some leeway in terms of how the bands connect and the basic thickness of the case so i think they can shave off actually quite a bit of thickness of the case without interfering with the band connections uh and given how much how many resources they've put into making these collection of bands i really think that they're not gonna we're gonna get i feel like at least two

iterations of the Apple Watch with the original band connector. It just, it seems like a really good way to anger customers otherwise. Yeah, I agree. I actually would be not surprised at all if the Apple Watch 2 looked no different than the Apple Watch original and that they focused on upgrading the inside. And I don't think, I'm not sure they even want to make it thinner because do they feel that it's too thick or do they feel that they could use

a little more battery life or some other thing on the inside? Like, do they want to make it harder on themselves by making it thinner or do they want to make the whole thing just be better? I feel like it's at a place now where better is probably more important than thinner. I don't hear a lot of people complaining that the Apple Watch is just too thick, but maybe those people are out there. And I agree. I think one of the advantages of

doing these band updates as they've been doing is kind of wrecked if they then just make them all kind of invalid. I think, yes, Apple has a history of making things incompatible in the past, but I feel like the Apple Watch is, yeah, it's at a careful stage. You want to nurture it and make the users feel happy about it. And keeping their band investment, even if they decide to upgrade, seems like a way to do that, make them happy about the Apple Watch ecosystem, right? Okay, Listener Brando says, why doesn't Apple use the colors of the iPod Touch on their phones?

They look really good on metal. They do. But anodizing aluminum is challenging to begin with. And also there's something to be said about following design trends and going with going with the colors of the season. This sounds so dumb, but because Apple is now in fashion with the Apple Watch, I think they've actually they've always had sort of an eye towards what colors are sort of hot and in the public eye. Rose gold is a really great example of that. And I feel like there are only so many color variations that they can put out for the iPhone line before it starts getting ridiculous.

They already have a ton of SKUs in their system. They have a ton of different iPhone models. And every extra iPhone color you get, that adds a whole extra slew of models because then you have to look at the LTE models. And are there different? They've mostly unified that band spectrum. But I think are there still two?

There are two models of iPhone 6S and two models of 6S Plus, I believe. Yeah, I mean, they have five models plus all the colors that are already there, plus all of the size SKUs for storage, right? There's a lot. Yeah, exactly. And then so you add that, each color adds all of those extra SKUs. And then in comparison, the iPod Touch had, what, two sizes per color?

So it was a little less of it was a little less stress. So that's the short answer. I would love to see it. And I feel like Apple's gotten much better about handling multicolored things. But yeah, the more colors they offer, I don't think it being kind of like fashion is an issue. I just think, yeah, that's the question is, do they really want to stock? Do they really want to commit to stocking like five or six different colors or even like two or three additional colors on top of? They've got gold and rose gold and silver and space gray already.

So they've already got four colors. I just I feel like they're all so plain. I would really love to see a brighter, like. Super vibrant. Like a color color, like a blue, you know, that would be great. But I don't know. I hope so. I hope at some point in the future they will turn around and embrace colorful stuff like they did with the Nano.

But I wouldn't put money on it for soon i guess uh one last real question before a ridiculous question so lister mike not mike hurley because he spelled it right uh says woo burn mike hurley i said you spelled your name wrong which of your hot takes have cooled off the most this is really interesting what initial impressions of new tech have you did you later reverse do you have anything that you think, you know, that you, you thought one thing and then after using it for a little while, you're like, Oh no, actually that's no good. That's a good, I'm going to have you start with yours. Okay. You're going to pass. All right. Okay. I'm not going to pass. I want to, I want to do, but I have a couple that I'm thinking about.

I'm going to, I'm going to mention one that's recent that I think people might be surprised by. But as conceptually I am behind the idea of 3D Touch, I never use it. I was talking to Gruber about this last week at the Apple event. And he was saying, and I think he's right, that one of the challenges here is that it's this alternate click, but you can't alternate tap, but you can't count on it on all of iOS. So it's gotten kind of put off on the side as some sort of strange, unique gestures that aren't really required, but they're optional. And that they might be better off saying, you know, and that they might be better off saying, you know, there's one alternate, you know, alternate touch.

And on 3D touch devices, it works with a 3D touch. And on all the other devices, it works with like a touch and hold. But they would have to redefine what the touches are. But this is the problem. It's just like the problem with the extra clicks on the Mac. It's like they already defined what everything is for a click and an alternate click. So even though you have the capability for this extra click, nobody really uses it because what's it good for? And you can't count on it on all devices. And, you know, and so for me, I say that I really like the idea and I feel like there could really be something amazing done with it. But

honestly, I never, I just never use 3D Touch. And in fact, I try very hard not to over, I never, I just never use 3D Touch. And in fact, I try very hard not to over, you know, it's made me even on the iPad, like afraid to push too hard on the screen for fear I trigger it when I don't want to, because I never want to. So that's mine. I've cooled on 3D Touch as implemented. 3D Touch is, I feel like I have the exact opposite path as you, where I started off being like 3D touch is weird and

it's a cool idea but then i completely forgot about it and in the last i'd say two months i've gotten really really into it this is funny uh i think mine is actually going to be the 6s plus uh i switched back to a 6s last week and I don't know how I lived without it. I have the 6S. I do have the battery pack on the back, and I do wish that the battery pack had a rose gold option because I have this lovely rose gold 6S that I only ever see like a peak of rose gold from the camera. But the 6S Plus is great in many ways. It does have the best camera of the iPhone line and its screen is amazing. But after having used it, I used it basically for four or five months and I made the decision when the SE was announced to go back to 4-inch, but I'm like, you know what? I kind of missed the 4.7-inch phone. And then once I went back, I realized just how much I was compromising to kind of run with the 6S Plus. that it kept me from working on my iPad or working on my Mac, where I was attempting to do things poorly on a semi-compatible screen rather than actually choosing the right device for the right space.

And I'm also really glad to just have a phone that fits in my pocket again. Yeah. Boy, Mike's taking it on the chin again in another week where he's not here. Sorry, Mike. He should never leave. This is the rule. This is the lesson, Mike.

Don't ever leave. One last question. This is from listener Dean. And it is what are Jason's Hawaiian must do slash visits? Because we talked about Hawaiian pizza and Hawaii came up on Twitter, Twitter, a bunch. Why is my favorite place in the world?

I would go there. I would go on vacation there every year, twice a year, all the time, whatever. I don't know. If you go to the big island of Hawaii, I liked staying over in the Kailua-Kona area, which is the drier area, warmer and drier as opposed to over by Hilo where it's rainy and muggy. warmer and drier as opposed to over by Gila where it's rainy and muggy. But from there, from either of those cities, actually, you drive to the volcano, to the volcano area. And there's the volcano's national park. And you can walk around and see where the Kilauea volcano, like there's a caldera.

And you can drive down to where the lava flow is flowed right over a road that used to be there. And it's pretty spectacular. The island of Kauai is amazing and has lots of lush foliage because it's the oldest and so sort of most eroded island. And it's got a big Waimea Canyon is beautiful. And you can go on a kayak or a canoe and paddle up the river and hike to waterfalls and stuff like that. So that's a beautiful one. Or you can go to Maui and just sit on the beach and hang out, which I also like. And even on Oahu, if you drive through the tunnel to the windward side of the island, you can get away. It's not just an island that is Honolulu.

If you get outside of Honolulu, there's some pretty amazing stuff on the rest of the island. So I have, I don't know, I would say Hawaii is a must-do, even if you're far away. It's pretty awesome, and I love it. And being on the West Coast, it's very easy to get there, which is also pretty cool. Wren, do you have Hawaiian thoughts? Oh, gosh. I haven't been to Hawaii since I was 13. But the one trip that I made, I quite loved. You're gonna have to go back. That's all there is to it. I know. You know what?

Virgin America flies out of SFO now. So I'm just gonna have to tag it on to the end of an Apple trip. Just go to go to Hawaii instead of go back to the East Coast. This is our this is what we're lucky about. So my you know, you living in New England, my sister-in-law lived in New England for a few years. And I remember distinctly, she came out for a family thing that we all met for Christmas in Hawaii. And the flight from Boston all the way to get to Hawaii, which just, it is impossible. So people in the East Coast, people in Europe, it's sort of impossible to even think about it. Although I have had friends, I had a friend from Germany actually go to Hawaii last year. I've had some friends from the East Coast. My aunt and uncle who have lived most of their lives in the East did it for their daughter, got married there, in fact, and it was pretty great. So, you know, I recommend it, but it's a lot easier for us West coasters because it's just like a four and a half hour flight from here. And it's much

further from, think about flying to San Francisco and then tack on another four or five hours. And that's how, it's a long way, but it's got in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's out there, but it's great. All right. Well, I think that has done it for this episode of Upgrade. Wren, thank you so much for coming on and being my very special guest star. Thanks for having me, Jason. This was a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's always a pleasure to have you on.

It's fun to change it up when Mike is away. The mice will play when Mike is away. And insults all the things that Mike likes. Yeah, you know, he'll get over it. He's fine. He's tough. I bought him a pen at the Apple store today. He'll be fine. Pens make it all better. It's true.

So that wraps it up. You can check our show notes out in your podcast app of choice, of course, or going to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 82. Thank you to our sponsors, PDF Pen Pro from Smile, ITProTV, and MailRoute. You can reach us. Smile, ITProTV, and MailRoute. You can reach us. Serenity is SETTERN on Twitter. S-E-T-T-E-R-N. I am JStell on Twitter. Mike is I-M-Y-K-E. You can tell him all the terrible things we said about him. And we will see you next week for another episode of

Upgrade. Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye. Thank you.