Upgrade - 84: Peek it, But Don't Pop it!

Episode Date: April 11, 2016

Jason and Myke discuss the 9.7-inch iPad Pro's True Tone display and the trouble with 3D Touch.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 80 for today's show is brought to you by casper it pro tv and fresh books my name is mike hurley i am joined by jason snell live from arizona hi jason how are you? Well, hello from the desert, where it rained yesterday. I don't know what's going on. Oh, does it rain in the desert? What happens when it rains in the desert? Things flood because they're incapable of dealing with rain. No drainage, I assume. Well, they have like emergency storm drainage because things do do flood so like the uh where my mom lives there's a golf course nearby and uh there are a few places that are suspiciously low lying in the golf course and that's because if there's too much rain they will flood with water purposefully in order to

protect it but we were just driving driving back yesterday and there was just huge puddles of water uh on the sides of all the streets and there were a few little flooded intersections and they don't know how to handle it because it it does it so infrequently here like when it snows in london exactly or gets too hot in london exactly you build your infrastructure for the most common occurrences and not the not the least common occurrences and this is why people from the northeast uh of the u.s made fun of the people in like atlanta when they had a blizzard and it was only like two inches of snow and it shut down the city but you know they didn't have any equipment to deal with it because it doesn't usually do that there and that's sort of like rain in the desert there's no point in uh you know they just don't deal with it the people don't deal with it so they don't even know what it looks like

so a couple of weeks ago, we did the first ever CarCast. And this week, we are doing something not as ambitious, but different. What are you doing this week as we're recording? Well, I am. So I'm in Arizona. My kids are on spring break. We decided to come down and visit my mom for a few days. My family hadn't been down here in quite a while, actually. Listeners know that I occasionally am down here visiting my mom, but my family hadn't been down here. She's visited us, but we hadn't flown everybody down here for about a year and a half. So I decided I wanted to travel light. We're here for like three and a half days. And I had that moment where I realized I was going to have to bring a laptop just to record a podcast, just to record this podcast and also clockwise this week.

And I thought, that's silly. I think I can make this all work without a laptop. Let's give it a try. So I brought my microphone and I brought my USB audio interface and I brought my USB lightning adapter and I am talking to you via Skype on my iPad while recording my audio via my iPhone. And you're using the wonderful Ferrite to make that happen. I am using Ferrite Recording Studio to record although I could have used any many fine recording devices are available for ios but um i'm using ferrite because i have it and i know it um but yeah the idea is uh this is the this is where we are with ios stuff i know fraser does this when he records his podcasts to fraser spears it's two devices i can't hear there's um, for people who don't do a lot of podcasting,

ideally you hear your own voice, uh, reflected back into your, uh, earphones as you're speaking so that instead of it being like super muffled, uh, you, you can actually hear, you can hear if you're too loud and you can hear if you're too close to the microphone. And I can't do that today because I'm using two separate devices so it's a little bit weird for me but um it's uh it gets me to not travel with that third third device on this trip which is what i wanted to do and uh so here we are yeah that is uh it's a shame i'm gonna be going to atlanta in a couple of days for the first ever RelayCon and the second ever live Pen Addict. And I am in that situation too

where I know that I'm going to have to take my MacBook Pro because I have to do some podcast editing, most likely, on the trip. There is potential that I won't be, and if that's the case, then I'll be leaving at home. But I'm about 70% sure that I will be taking it with me and it's frustrating and that's mainly because whilst i know apps like ferrite exist the projects that i'll be working on will have been started on my mac and i don't even want to think about what horrific nonsense might occur if i try yeah you

could you could do some contortions to get those to move like bouncing things in place and pulling out the files and all but it's basically once you start in one place you should you should just edit the rest of them in that in that place too yeah that's true so and i haven't done the tests with ferrite yet that you have and i'm not gonna start doing like episodes for production you know just solely on that this is a little experimental for us but it's uh you know i i think the car cast was the most wacky thing that we've done in a long time so this is a slightly less weird than that to get a peek behind the curtain jason sent me a message a couple of days ago and was like i have something that i want to try like i just want to tell you and you tell me what you think

and he explained the situation not wanting to bring his mac and he was like would you mind if we recorded an ios and i was like after the car cast like nothing can can shock or surprise me anymore we we went to the ultimate limit for production that we're ever gonna have to worry about so i'm i'm down with it's good i just was you know i wanted to i wanted to to make sure that you were going to be okay before we did this because i know that this is uh uh a little bit outside of your comfort zone. But yeah, we went all the way outside the comfort zone with the car cast. We drove through it. We did. We did. We drove through the rain.

I've been busy today, Jason. How so? So over the last few weeks, especially, I've had more and more people Over the last few weeks, especially, I've had more and more people asking me if I have any suggestions for the Apple Pencil and some of the things that I do with it. And I've been thinking about finding a way to put some of this stuff together because I feel like I'm sending lots of tweets with links to various things. So I think this is more because more people are starting to get the pencil now that the 9.7 inch iPad is available. So over the time that I've had my Apple Pencil, there have been a few things that I have, I guess, customized might be the right word, my Apple Pencil with. And I wanted to share some of those in a little blog post, which I did over at MikeWasRight.com. Best. Shameless. The best, the best the best url uh so there's

i'm gonna put a link in the show notes to that and basically it's three things it's the fisher space pen clip um and i added the clip because uh i wanted to stop the apple pencil from rolling around it doesn't actually do a great job of clipping to things because it's not incredibly tight um around the pencil so I don't recommend clipping you can you've got to be aware that it might not one day you might lose your pencil if you're not careful but I use that main stop it rolling I use a pen loop by a company called Leuchtturm 1917 which I stick the pen loop to the back of my iPad and then I'm able to put the Apple Pencil through the loop,

and it's always where I want it to be. And I covered my Apple Pencil in a skin by a company called dbrand, and it makes it look like a HP Pencil. So there's just three things I've done. I'm thinking about at some point, I've been meaning to do this for some time, but never got around to it, of talking about some of the software I use as well,

because I get lots of people ask me what note apps i use and i will say them here i use two i use an app called notability and i also use an app called good notes they're both very good i haven't yet decided which one of those apps i prefer but i i use them both and i like them both so i recommend them both and we'll put them both in the show notes if you want to go and check them out but yeah so that's there um and i took some pictures as well uh which are making some people cry out in horror uh and some people uh think that it's amazing and i prefer the people to think it's amazing so i have some follow-up um first is why the choice other than that perhaps that that it was there and so it was

an opportunity for you to to do it why make the pencil look like a traditional pencil and not perhaps like a pen since you love pens so much um the skin from d brand this is the only one they do yeah um i would ideally want to make it like a pen but the thing is there isn't an iconic pen design right so really all i'll be doing is just changing the color whilst the the hb the old school hb pencil skin i like because the thing is called the apple Pencil and too it's like you see it and you know exactly what it is right like what it's meant to be pretending to be and I think that it's so much fun and obviously you know you can tell from my photos people notice about me I love stickers and this sticker is great and also it actually does provide a little bit of additional

grip on the Apple Pencil find it a little slippery for me um not so much that it's frustrating but the fact that this thing adds a little grip i like a lot so next question um the clip so you said you got you you it doesn't clip well but it stops the pencil from rolling around i have to ask about this because the pencil doesn't roll around well it's it's weighted it doesn't it doesn't roll around very far and clipping it to things might be useful but instead you're stopping you're solving a problem that isn't really there and then the clip could solve another problem it doesn't i i need more here a couple of points here what you can do see i don't recommend this because i don't want to be i don don't want to get someone in trouble for this. You can use like a pair of pliers.

And before you put that clip on the pencil, you can kind of pull the two edges of the clip together to make it tighter and then force it on. And it's more likely to be more secure, right? You can do that. You can tighten it up. And you can clip it on, and I have done, but if you clip it on forcefully, that clip could just pop off at the end because it's not fixed into it. I would recommend, if you really want to clip it, to put some glue on the inside of this thing

and try and stick it on that way. Now, saying about the rolling, i totally understand what you're saying as someone who doesn't use the apple pencil or any type of pen or pencil very much they did weight it and it does keep it in place but it there's a couple of things when i put pens and pencils down i have clips on them which most of mine do they don't move at all right they don't move because the clip weights them, keeps them from moving. The Apple Pencil does roll a little bit. It doesn't stop dead where you put it. And also, if you put it down with any force.

Oh, yeah, I have one here. I'm looking at it. I can hear you rolling it around. Like if you put it down with any force, which I've done, like once you use this thing enough, you'll like pick it up. You'll drop it as I do, like not like like throw it but just like drop it on the desk and the weights inside of the pencil if you drop it from at speed or at an angle can actually propel the thing forward oh yeah i see that okay good point good point so you're you're physically stopping it it can't do a rotation with it with the clip

yeah it won't do it it will only go it will only go like one turn at most and i i understand why you would think this and it's why the reason apple did it and it's why most people never come across this problem because they don't use it in the same way that i do and it's mainly because i have an expectation for how these products and products of this ilk would work and this is why i don't have any pens that i use of frequency that don't have something to stop them rolling, whether they're flat on one side or they have a clip on them. I have pens that don't have clips, but they don't get used by me very much because of that.

Okay. So there you go. I'm impressed with your level of detail and enthusiasm, but not surprised. You know, this is something that means a lot to me i know i know that about you there is a there is probably another little bit of follow-up that i should mention there's a there's an additional ipad in the photos that was from last week right there is a gold 9.7 inch uh ipad pro um i'm gonna talk a little bit more about this later on in the show yeah i think that i

think you should i think you need to i think i have to right the other thing is something that i've been working on with you for a little bit um yeah i have i'm working on a new podcast it's called the ring post and it is about professional wrestling which is the last of the things that i enjoy that i don't have a podcast about. And it's going to be on The Incomparable. Yes. Which I'm very excited about. We have some amazing artwork done.

I've set up a landing page. I'm trying to do some different things with this show. I'm trying to do some things that we don't usually do, or that I don't usually do when launching shows or working on shows one of those is I've set up a website currently which is at ringpost.fm which will eventually forward to where the show lives but right now there's a landing page there and there's a newsletter link

so you can sign up to a newsletter to find out when the show launches and there's also a link to a Twitter account which is ringpost.fm where I'm also going to be, again, another thing that I don't do, I'm going to be just tweeting from that account thoughts and opinions about wrestling, which I usually also don't do from podcast accounts. So I'm trying some different things. And it's because I have something that I like that I have an outlet for that the majority

of people that follow me on Twitter don't care about. So I'm going to tweet all that stuff over on that account. And so this is something that I like. And we were talking about this. I've been thinking about this for a while. And it just popped into my head one day with some prodding from Adina to talk to you to see if you would want it on the Incomparable. Because I feel like it fits better with the themes of the Incomparable than the themes of the Relay, I think.

I think. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, somebody in the chat room just asked the question about why it isn't on Relay, and I'm sure you'll hear that a lot. And I would say it's the same reason that Upgrade and Clockwise aren't on The Incomparable. I had my own podcast network, and I didn't think that doing tech podcasts was a good fit for The Incomparable. Because The Incomparable is about cultural stuff. It's about entertainment that we like, and this fits perfectly in there.

If I were to do a sports podcast at some point, it would go on The Incomparable. But if I were to do something that was more about technology and leaning more that direction, feel like that i would take that to relay and so ring post makes a lot of sense to be on incomparable where we've got all sorts of different shows about um about broad topics and also very specific enthusiasms like uh like uh i mean two relay hosts uh micah and christina do their podcast about cartoons on and that's on the incomparable yeah so there is a there is a real uh cross-pollination between the two networks we are we are cousins there's a poison pill mike you can't take you can't take us over if you try to take over the if relay tries to take over the

incomparable um a kitten dies so just stay stay stay where you are all right i'll do what i can no promises but also like because I wanted to do some things that were a little bit different to how I usually do them, it was fun for me to try them out in a different place. Yeah. Just make a fresh perspective. You don't have to tell me about experimentation

and the value of it, right? I mean, this is what I love about seeing you do this. This gives you an opportunity to do some stuff that you're not doing all the time. And in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of your approach to doing a podcast. So I would imagine that the podcast itself will also be, you know, a place for you to try out some new ways of doing things. And I mean, this is why I do all the stupid podcasts that I do. It's because I want to try different stuff out. And

they're all, you know, all of them tend to be because there's something or other that I want to do that it's like, oh, well, that would be funny. Why don't we do a podcast where we ask if something is a robot or not? You know, it's a terrible idea, but it could be funny. And so I love that you're doing this. Like, for example, talking about things that are a little bit different, the first episode will most likely be just me. Cool. Which I don't usually do. Right.

So, you know, that's just another thing. Like, I don't have a show where I'm the only one talking. I have no guest. Right. I'm going to have guests and I have a selection of people

that I think will be really fun to bring on the show. But like, I'm not going to have a fixed co-host, and there might be some episodes or some segments where it's just me monologuing. So there you go. I'm trying out some different stuff. But that's enough of the mic update for today. We do have some other follow-up, but I want to take our first break, Jason.

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off. Thank you so much to ITProTV for sponsoring this show. Woohoo! Alright, Mr. Snell. Yes, sir. Mr. Hurley. Your favorite topics. New Kindles. Rumors are flying as we record this this probably very soon after we finish recording this and post it they'll they'll announce a new kindle jeff bezos said it's coming but we don't

know a lot more there are rumors um next week i'm sure we'll talk about it there's a rumor that it's called the oasis um and after all you're my wonderwall uh and the also so federico will get one and um that it may be waterproof and that it has a weird shape that um it's thicker on one side than the other and that it's sort of meant to be grippable in that way i'm kind of skeptical that it's got an accelerometer gasp that will automatically rotate the screen gasp um kind of skeptical that it's got an accelerometer, gasp, that will automatically rotate the screen, gasp, imagine, and that it has an attached, you can get a battery case for it that will let it run for weeks, they say. The pictures look weird. I don't know what I think, but the problem with the rumors is you get some of the details and not all of the details and you're going to get to hear sort of the whole big story around the plot product so um i'm curious and uh we'll try to talk about it next week you're not here next week because

you're going to be traveling because of your uh your your pen show duties so we will see we'll see what happens there you can probably find someone who's more interested in reading than i am probably probably so we'll see i i'm not i i uh i'd love to talk to scott mcnulty about it if i can find uh time in his schedule to do it because he is uh he is a very smart guy and a kindle addict we could note to self new show Kindle addict. And nothing but Kindles. So we'll see. We'll follow up on this. I'm intrigued. We had a good discussion about it on Clockwise last week, actually,

because there's this question about, is there anything left in this product category? What do you do to innovate in this category that's sort of, it's a niche product. People love it who buy them, and other people don't see the need for them. But they've sort of perfected a lot of aspects of the Kindle. So where do you go from here?

And the concern is that you get really weird is where you go from here. I really don't know if battery life is the thing that needs to be considered for this product. Yeah, the waterproof rumor is interesting because famously Jeff Bezosos is you know supposedly reads in the bathtub with his kindle in a plastic bag waterproof is perfect for this device yeah that so that's a that's a good one um the the uneven back where there's one side that's thicker than

the other um that could be problematic ergonomically although presumably they've thought of that but it's amazon so you never know sometimes their products are just super weird um so we'll see but um i'm always intrigued with that product category it's uh kind of fun to see what they do there and uh the nice thing is that they can't take my current kindle away from me so if i don't like it i'll be okay. Cool. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. I mean, I think that the one-handed grip type thing is cool. I've used that with smart covers in the past and iPads,

and I think it's nice. It's all down to the details. Yeah. It could be good. It could be well done. You won't really be able to tell until it's in hand. But yeah, it's intriguing. And waterproofing would be great on it because this is also presumably the high-end Kindle.

You know, and for most people, if you want an e-reader, the Paperwhite is the best one to get. And no, it's not as nice as the Voyage, but it's just, the Voyage isn't better enough to make it worth it for most people. And this is the same

thing i think this is going to be you know once again it's the it's the the platinum kindle for the people who love love love love their kindles and uh want it to be more than just sort of a disposable reader yeah yeah how much you think this for? Do you think it will be like still in the... How much does the Voyage cost? I don't know. An amount of money, I guess. About $100. No.

It's a lot. You're asking me to look things up on an iPad. I'm doing it as we speak. A couple hundred bucks. The Kindle Voyage is $19 199.99 yep yep well they have a 220 one as well yeah because the 201 special offers yeah yeah all right but we'll see i know that this is something that you're excited about i'm sure you're like you'll buy it you'll pretty buy it anyway right it's quite possible yeah yeah and scott certainly will buy it so but you don't have to

next week we'll talk about it and you don't have to listen perfect that's how you like it all right and you put a link in here to uh a neiman lab post that i've not read because i just can't some of these things yeah this is well the quick the key quote in this post uh which is the headline is audible long known only for audiobooks is branching out into podcasts and news they have this new thing called channels it looks to me it's unclear because it's in beta the way that it's described it seems like this is like if you're an audible member you get access to these things which makes it sort of like some of the other things like Howl from Earwolf that are, you know, you pay a subscription fee and you get access to

podcasts that are behind a paywall, basically, and you use their app. The quote in the Neiman Lab story was, podcasts are shifting into verticalized, producer-specific experiences, into verticalized producer-specific experiences because there is nothing I love more than a verticalized experience. Uh-huh. And I would say Neiman Lab, while writing very interesting things about media and journalism,

should not be using industry buzzwords like that because that's really awful. But this is what they mean. It's like, oh, podcasts are going to be things that are behind paywalls where you have to use a specific app to listen to that producer's podcasts to which i would say that's not a podcast that's something else that's the but if it's if it's premium paywalled only available in certain platforms it's not a podcast anymore it's yeah it's paid audio content that isn't necessarily an audiobook. And, you know, that's fine. But several people, I tweeted about this,

several people suggested that this needs to create the verticals vertical for us. Just bring it all the way back around. I agree with you. In the same way that audiobooks are not podcasts, you know, like this isn't a podcast either um this is fine this is like an extension of that but i don't i don't think that they're podcasts in the way that we think of them and i think personally that a better name should be applied to this type of content yeah i think this is i mean this is also trying people feel like oh podcasts are hot now so

people are going to use the phrase podcast as a way to sell a new product yeah that is not really a podcast or it is i mean i don't know what um bugs me more uh the idea that uh podcasts are going to turn into this or that there are some offerings where it seems like they want to charge you a monthly fee uh for access behind a paywall to things that are really just podcasts that they paid somebody a lot of money for, but it's just another podcast. I think as we have the Relay support system, I think having people support podcasts and trying to find business models for podcasts is all good. But once you've got a verticalized experience, I'm not sure that's a podcast anymore. I don't know what it is,

but it's another way to sell. It's like, oh, you like audio content on your mobile devices. Well, what if we gave you some that you paid us for directly? And that's not a bad question to ask, but it reminds me of the early days of the web as a lot of podcasting stuff does where big companies come in and they create like the portal strategy which is we're going to be the one place that is your gateway to everything on the web um and in the end although

there are lots of huge players on the web the the web is bigger than that it's got lots of players at lots of different levels and lots of uses that are not kind of behind a paywall. Um, and I think podcasting is, is going to be resilient like that too. I think there's room for, for premium stuff, but, um, but I think it'll be interesting to see how people react to that because I'm, I'm skeptical about how many people are going to want to spend $10 or $15 a month for a small collection of premium podcasts on a particular network. I'd much rather donate to MaxFun for the Flophouse, frankly, than do something like that. But it's an HBO strategy, and if their content is HBO-like, then it'll be worth it. I'm skeptical about whether that's the

case. All right, so moving on, let's talk about the True Tone display a little bit. Yeah. So you posted your iPad Pro review late last week. I think it was late last week. I did. And so you've kind of come to the point now where you've reviewed this product, right? So you feel like you've had enough time with it. You've you've kind of thought about it. You've played around with it. What's the kind of high level feeling about this? I know we spoke about it a bit last week,

but kind of my takeaway from the review was this is a really great iPad, but it's not my iPad. Is that fair to say? Oh, yeah. I mean, from my perspective, that was basically it is. This is the iPad most people are going to want, I think. This is the mainstream iPad. It's a great product. I'm happy with my bigger iPad, but I am used to being an edge case because I also love the 11-inch MacBook Air. And, you know, I've always been somebody who's kind of liked a lot of the edge cases in terms of mobile devices, and that's fine. But it's great.

And if the big iPad Pro didn't exist, I would buy it in a heartbeat. It's just for me, I really have taken to the features that are available on the bigger model. I like the larger screen, and I'm not willing to go back. The True Tone display is really interesting, and I'm interested in what you think about it, too. I mean, what I said in the review is that this is about as Apple a feature as there is, right? I mean, this is the hardware of the display, the hardware of the sensors, and then the software that does the calibration. And that's all working together.

And it's all been built to solve a problem nobody really knew that they had, right? Nobody was like, oh, when will somebody finally automatically adjust the white point on my displays based on my surroundings? I'm sure somebody said that somewhere, but was not like a clamor for this feature um somebody at apple people at apple said you know what would be great that nobody's doing is adapting to the color in your room and changing the white point um and uh so this is uh this is what they did and uh i think that i think that's just very very Apple to build all this in and work with the hardware and the software and solve a problem that we didn't even know we had. So after recording Cortex of Grey and him talking about his multiple iPad solution, and then I recorded with you and we spoke about the ipad uh i decided i wanted to try out the 9.7 so i i i've headed to the app store on tuesday and purchased one and i've given some of my thinking about this on on connected we're going to talk about it on cortex again but kind of like

the the real high level is um right now i'm thinking that with the amount i'm enjoying using ios uh is there a world in which I could have multiple iPads in the same way that I've had multiple Macs for many years? You know, I've had a desktop Mac and I've had a laptop Mac and I've used them for different things. Uh, or I have my laptop on my iPad and I use them for different things. And in all honesty, I feel like I'm developing a system where I am doing that, where I am using the 9.7 inch iPad for when I am consuming content, like I'm reading or I'm looking at Twitter or something like that. And then I'm using 12.9 when I'm doing work, when I'm preparing for shows and

I'm invoicing and that kind of stuff. And mainly it's because the multitasking on the larger iPad is so superior to the multitasking on the smaller iPad Pro. For me, the multitasking on the 9.7, it's nice that it's there and you use it in a pinch, but I tend to have one app on the screen at a time. But on the larger iPad Pro, I tend to have multiple apps on the screen at one time because why not?

But one of the things that I'm finding interesting is the more I use each iPad, the more I love the other one. So I enjoy them both whilst I use them. But when I'm using the big iPad, and I go to Twitter or something, it's way nicer on the other one. And then when I'm using the small one, it's like, this is good, and then I go back to the 12.9, and it's like, oh my god, this screen is so incredibly large and amazing. So I'm really finding, for me, a kind of a balance in trying to do my work across these two devices.

And I know it's ridiculous, but my main thing is I'm trying to think about what my my future of computing is and i think it's more like this than what i've had before and nobody ever you know i'm having people tell me it's ridiculous having two ipads but i never had anybody tell me it was ridiculous for having a mac and a macbook pro like an imac and a macbook pro nobody ever said to me that was ridiculous so you know i'm just trying to find the balance that makes sense to me but anyway park that for another time i want to talk about true tone so okay okay we'll park we'll park that that was that was interesting i've got to ponder

your um i still have to talk through this a bunch more like that that was kind of just a i've had this for a few days but right um and also i feel like i have to try and defend myself a little bit uh anyway the true tone i think makes this the most comfortable device that i've ever read text on i think um it's got all of the great stuff that ios devices have had forever uh Nightshift makes it even nicer. But there's something about this screen. I look at this screen and I'm like, this screen

is incredible. And the only thing that I feel that must be the difference here is True Tone. Because it's the only thing that's changed it. So it is much easier on my eyes. I love the feature. And the colors feel more vibrant to me

than on other iOS devices. They are. Of course they are. When I look at... I've forgotten that. Yes, they are more vibrant. That's like a whole other feature. I keep forgetting that they put that in there. When I look at my home screen, it's like, my icons have never looked like this before.

And I'm looking at it, I i'm like this thing is amazing and so i'm when i read with this or when i you know like looking it for long periods of time like i was i read i read articles i was reading stuff for this show today on it i'm like this is really nice and it's also not the size of a tea tray. So that balance, I think, is making this a really nice... I have my consumption iPad and my creation iPad. That's where I am in my life right now. But I'm liking the true tone display a lot for that.

And genuinely, I think that I would miss it a lot if I didn't have a device that had it. Color means less to me than it does to many people. I wanted to ask you that question without trying to offend you uh and how dare you sir exactly and i just wonder if maybe maybe there is a possibility that you're not getting the benefit that i'm getting it's entirely possible

i i mean i can see colors i know you can and so that's why i don't want to make it sound like to be offensive in certain ranges um of especially reds and greens i my differentiation skills are low right i'm my sensors are not calibrated for that to use totally nerd terms um the uh so yeah i mean this is a lot of products that when it's about the colors on them, I just punt. I just say, yeah, they say that it's like this. I can't judge this. I'll let other people judge it. So it's definitely a better display.

I mean, the displays on the 2015 iMacs are the same color gamut. They're brighter. This is the new generation of display tech from apple and so i don't have this on my big ipad pro nor do i have it on my 5k imac because i have the 2014 5k imac so um yeah it's a beautiful it's a beautiful display i mean what what can you say about it and there are lots of colors that cannot be properly displayed on other devices because they're outside the color space. Apple has a whole list. They will tell you all about all the different colors that can't be displayed.

The one I laughed at was the uniform of the Denver Broncos is an orange that is outside the color space, the standard color space, but is in the color space of this device and the two iMac displays. So this is what, if we see a Retina external display from Apple, it'll also, I mean, this color gamut, this style of display, this is the new generation.

They haven't given it a name. True Tone isn't really the name of it because that's more to do with the white point setting. But this display tech that's in here and those two iMacs, this is Apple's new generation display tech. So my guess is that the next iPad, big iPad Pro will also have this display tech

because that's, you know, it'll be like the 5K iMac. The first one doesn't have it. The second one does. Right. So, you know, it'll be like the 5K iMac. The first one doesn't have it, the second one does. Right. So, you know, I do feel that this screen is vastly superior and we had somebody write to us about, you know, one of these kind of unintentional benefits, I think,

but ends up being great for some people. So Benjamin wrote in to say that the combination of True Tone and Night Shift is helping him use his iPad better than he's used any device before. Benjamin suffers from a couple of conditions. He has dyslexia and a syndrome called Erlen syndrome, which basically means that reading bright displays can be really difficult. So the reductions in bright blue light and bright light that come from the combination so he said that Night Shift was helping him out

but then when he tried out the True Tone it was like now I can sit and use this device for hours and I've never been able to do that before and I just think that's really cool. It's one of those things where it's like this guy can now use his iPad and can now use an iPad better than he's been able to use any device

because they're continuing to advance the complexities of what these displays can do. Yeah, and I hadn't considered that, but it's a cool thing that this is, yeah, Night Shift thrown in here too. I wonder too if the reason that Night Shift was sort of floating out there as a feature and then Apple finally added it at this point we were wondering what was going on with apple and this uh blue light bandwagon um if it was all connected to the true tone stuff where they're like no no no no we don't want to do that until the true tone is ready because that's that's where we're going to drop all these features because they are similar night shift is not related to

a sensor but they're similar features. And so I do wonder about that. Yeah, as I say, like this, this display is just nicer, it feels nicer on my eyes to read. And it just feels like when I look at it, it's just way more comfortable. And, you know, like playing around in the settings and turning the true tone on and off. It's like, yeah, okay, this this is a good looking screen here. So I like it. I like it a lot. And, you know, I don't know what color purists say about this sort of stuff. You know, I'm sure they love the gamut, but I don't know what they think about the fact that it changes the color. But I think it's awesome that it does it for me anyway.

Great. Should we take a break? I think that's a good idea. Today's show is also brought to you by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses that you can get for a fraction of the price that you'll find in stores. When you go to buy a mattress, usually you're paying for a few different things. You're not only paying for the mattress, but you're also paying for some of the costs of running a showroom, right? This stuff is all built into the prices when you go into a store and buy a mattress. You're paying for the lights, you're paying for the floors, you're paying for the person who's selling you the mattress.

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wrote a little article the other day over a mac world about what you call the trouble with 3D touch. What is said trouble? So I was at Apple, you know, for that event the other week, and I was talking to Gruber and we, and I, he and I were just like talking about it with stuff, you know, catching up a little bit. And we, we got on the subject of of 3d touch and you know i asked him because these you know the the iphone se doesn't have it and i asked him if he used it because i said i basically never use it and he said no i never use it either and we were talking about what the what the issues are and i thought you know i should i should write something about this um because you write about products in theory you know when you're using them after you know a week and you write about products in theory, you know, when you're using them after, you know,

a week and you write your review, it's like, well, this I tried this feature out. I think it's very clever. And I do think it's a very clever feature. I think it's got some things that are implemented really well. I think the feature itself is brilliant that it senses your your finger pressure and triggers at more or less the right time. And the Taptic Engine physical feedback is good. I think the problem, and I worried about this at the time, but over the course of the last six months, I find that it is, I've sort of stopped looking for it and I've kind of forgotten it exists. And one of the reasons is because while some of the features are really great,

switching apps using sort of the 3D Touch on the edge of the screen, the trackpad initiation by pressing down on the keyboard is a good one. is a good one. I think the problem with 3D Touch in a lot of places is that on the app icons, they're not customizable enough and don't have access to, as far as I can tell, enough live data to make them more than, for most apps, just super basic shortcuts. And my biggest issue is things like peek and pop, I find not particularly useful. And you know, some people find them useful. I've heard from a lot of people like, well, I use 3d touch. So you're wrong. It's like, okay, well, I didn't say people didn't use it. In fact, I think what I said, my article is people who use 3d touch are not monsters. You did say that. And I had a chuckle when I read it.

But I think I've also talked to a lot of people who don't use 3D Touch very much. Or if they say they use it, they say, well, I use it, but I really am only using it to move the cursor around and switch apps. I don't like peek and pop because I feel like in most cases it's a waste of time. There are very few cases where I want to peek at something where I don't just want to see it. And tapping on a link and seeing it and then going back in most of the time is less fussy than pushing a little bit till it peaks, but not so much that it pops and then seeing what it is and then deciding to let go or push it down or swipe. So I don't love the peek and pop thing. I don't use it a lot.

I don't think that it saves a lot of time. But my overarching point is that I feel like just as with the force click on the Mac, we're suffering from the fact that this is not available on all devices. And so nobody wants to do anything important with this gesture because you only can get it on a couple of devices. And so you can't count on it. So you can't do anything super critical on it.

You have to put your super critical interface stuff somewhere else and have this more for niceties. And that's why on the Mac, when you force click on something, you get this weird, it's the equivalent of like the old three finger click, three finger tap thing where you like define terms and stuff. And logically in a world where force calibration existed from the beginning, it would probably be the alternate click. It would be the control click, but it's not. Um, and similarly on, on iOS, I feel like in Grouper and I were talking about this, that something like a tap and hold, if we said, okay, tap and hold is the equivalent of a control click. It provides extra context. Um, and with 3d touch, you don't have to hold to hold you just you just do the 3d touch and it instantly brings you the context um would be a better convention but because uh it came in late to the party it's just sort of i feel like it it's less useful than it should be that this technology is being let down by the fact that everybody is afraid to make it central because only the 6 and 6s have it and that if you if you embraced a universal equivalent for

non-3d touch devices then it could be much more useful and if you imagine something like tapping and holding on an ipad and getting the equivalent of what happens with a 3D Touch on an iPhone. I feel like then people who've got the 3D Touch devices are going to be more happy. They're going to be able to do that much more readily because they don't have to wait. And there are going to be more uses of it, and that'll be better. And I just, I'm concerned it's going to be years before 3D Touch can be assumed on devices because devices survive. And there are devices being sold today, like the SE, brand new device that doesn't support it.

And all the iPads don't support it. And so I feel like 3D Touch is in this weird quandary where it's available, but for such a narrow group of people just like the force touch trackpads on the mac that it can't live up to its potential i would argue that the force touch trackpads are more available than the 3d touch capability right there there are more devices that have that ability to have that track pad than there are ios devices it's just a point but it's this the problem still remains you can't count on it right i mean if you've got an older older uh mac but you can't count on it to the

point where you'd say um this is a feature only available by a force touch right you can't you can't do it no so i uh do use peek and pop quite a bit actually um in a couple of different instances one of them is is when people send me links via iMessage uh i will very practically every single time i will peek and pop the link if i don't know what i'm going to right Like if I've not been asked for something or I'm not expecting something, somebody sends me a link to something, I will typically just use the Peek and Pop because I don't leave the app, right? I'm still in messages. I'm usually just checking something. So typically I'm going to be, I know the next thing I'll be doing after looking at that link is sending another iMessage. So I never leave. But I actually think that Apple fail

with their implementation of peek and pop in messages. And I will use Tweetbot as an example, which is another app that I use peek and pop in quite a lot. Like somebody will tweet a link to something and I want to see kind of what it is before I actually go ahead and open it and read it or check it out, you know, because sometimes it's like,

oh, what is this that they're linking to? So I'll give the scenario with Tweetbot and then go back to it or check it out, because sometimes it's like, oh, what is this that they're linking to? So I'll give the scenario a tweet bot and then go back to why I think it's better than messages. So when I peek a link in tweet bot, it will start to load the page. And then if I decide that I want to check it out, you push it in and you pop it into view, and the content is there.

It's there from the initial loading. And this is because they're using Safari View Controller for the whole scenario. But's there from the initial loading, and this is because they're using Safari View Controller for the whole scenario. But when I do this in Messages, once you pop, it then opens Safari, and the page loads again. So it makes that interaction feel slower in Messages, and therefore less useful than if I just click the link.

So if Apple could either use Safari View Controller or somehow find a way to pass the data from that initial load in messages over to Safari, I think that this would really help more people use it. Because I can see someone using it and then pressing the pop action, and then it just opens Safari and it loads again. It's like, well, I don't feel like you've helped me at all here. But applications that use Safari View controller actually have a much better experience because the data is being shared between the initial peak and pop so i think it could be done

a lot better yeah it makes sense that's i mean that that is one of my complaints for sure is i have this feeling i stopped doing it a lot on links because i felt like why am i calibrating the um level of my of my press on this link so that I peek it but don't pop it? And then looking at the link and deciding, oh, I do want to read this, and then pressing harder and having it open in Safari when I could just tap the link and look at it in Safari

and then tap the back link and go back. Yeah. See, that could be a lot more seamless. But for me, I like it because it allows me to kind of vet something, right? Before I go ahead and spend the time on it. I think that's why it exists and that's why I like it. Other interactions with 3D Touch that I enjoy, I do the cursor moving multiple times a day. That's a great feature. Love that feature.

I hardly ever use the multitasking because I wear a case on my phone. So it's super difficult to make that interaction occur, in my opinion. I never use the app icon actions. Yeah, I was, I mean, like I said earlier, I was excited about the app icon actions, Yeah, I was, I mean, like I said earlier, I was excited about the app icon actions, but they're so limited. And most apps are doing a very basic job. There are apps that do a great job. Somebody sent me a fitness app. And now I can't forget what I can't remember which one it was, I did forget. That actually shows you like your steps and other fitness data that it's doing some extra work to update its quick shortcut list, quick menu, quick view, whatever it's called. But most don't.

Most are really simple and not very useful. And some of that probably has to do with the limitations Apple puts on it. It could be more useful. And part of it is that I think the developers are just not that into it. And is that because they looked and people don't use that feature? Or is it that they're worried about other things and it's a feature that only iPhone successes can use, so they're not going to bother? I don't know.

I don't know. It's maybe a combination of all those things, but I wish it was more useful because it's a really cool idea. Plus, even Apple has failed to do it like a notification or a control center. You can't 3D touch on any of the icons in control center which seems dumb because like the camera icon is there um and the wi-fi and bluetooth icons are there where you could quickly connect to a bluetooth device or something like that but nope there's no support for it at all i got what i would like to be able to do is to customize those

uh shortcuts more like for example for example, the Slack one, I would love to be able to just basically make it all of the Slacks that I'm part of. Right. But, you know, yeah, as you say, some apps that you customize, some apps kind of feel like they're assuming. The messages one is the most baffling to me.

The people that are, whenever I've 3D touched the messages icon, and never the people I would expect to be there. I don't know how that's chosen. I don't know. But I've gotD touched the messages icon and never the people I would expect to be there. I don't know how that's chosen. But I've got to say overall that I do miss 3D touch on my iPads because the two finger trackpad is nowhere near as reliable for me.

I feel like I'm always just typing characters and can never get it to do anything. And I do, and as I say, I use Peek and Pop enough that I wish it was there. I want to talk about the long press idea that you propose. I think I can see why Apple might not want to do this. Oh, sure. So I think that the 3D Touch,

they want the 3D Touch Actions to only be on 3D Touch devices because it's a new feature for new devices. You know all of this. I know you do. I'm just saying. I think they want 3D Touch to be special, right? So they want to tie those things together. But I agree with you that if they don't do something

and it takes three years for all ios devices to get this right like if you imagine it just shuffling down the line i think it's going to be too late everyone's going to forget about this feature well that yeah that's the problem is i i think it's dumb if if the reasoning is well no no no we we want it to be things you can only do on a 3d touch device um then it's not as useful and that that's my feeling about force touch on the mac it's the same thing it's it's bring it into the family pick something that makes it you know it's still going to have advantages because it's hardware it's it's better it feels better to use it and there can still be features that don't exist like i'm not saying a long press on a non uh 3d touch iphone has to move the cursor or

something like that i i'm thinking more like can we define what the secondary touch is the secondary click like a control click on the mac can we define that and say that the convention is that is the secondary action and on devices with 3d touch that in that will kick it off instantaneously and on devices without it it will you'll tap and wait let's say and it will finally kick it off after a second or whatever it is um like it like it is now in some places uh just so that you've got that common frame of reference that will make people use this feature more. Because the flip side of this too is that the little quick menus thing on icons on the iPhone, I have those moments where I wish I had those on my iPad and I don't.

And I have this feeling of like, well, wait, I just bought this high-end iPad Pro and this is a feature that's in the OS, but because they are not providing me any alternative to it, I just don't get that feature. It makes it feel inconsistent. And saying, well, you know, we're limiting that to this one piece of hardware for an interface convention seems kind of messed up. So I just feel like it's not good enough. And I got some pushback from people who are like, what do you mean the problem with 3D Touch? I use 3D Touch. It's like, yeah, okay. People do use 3D Touch. I'm not saying they're bad people, right? I'm saying I think this is amazing technology that I find myself not using very often and why is that and the answer is I don't think it's good enough I don't think I think that Apple needs to make a bigger effort

to make 3d touch something that is something that anybody who's got a 3d touch capable device wants to use all the time and I feel like now there are a lot of people, and I'm including myself in this, but I've talked to other people like this, who, after the initial novelty war is off, just kind of don't bother. Because it's not that useful. Or they only use it for a couple of things. So that's really my feeling. They did some really great engineering to make this feature. make this feature. But I think just hoarding it on a couple of devices and having it be this like third click kind of thing is selling it short. Yeah, I was thinking that maybe one thing they could do would be to, for the iPad Pros, have this long press, right? Because I feel like we're such a long way away

from force touch or 3D touch on an iPad screen because of the sizes of them. It might be a good thing to say, you know, WWDC and iOS 10. I think iOS 10 is going to see a lot of advancements to 3D touch, honestly. That would be great. And I think it would be nice if they said,

oh, and on the ipad pro you can now long press but but you see this this is the challenge is right the ipad pros now are being sold these these new top of the line ios devices that don't have it so you're never going to be able as an app developer to rely on 3d touch for your apps right because it's only on people who have and, the number of people with 3D Touch devices will grow, but the iPads don't have it. The iPhone SE doesn't have it. And that's the problem with saying, oh, this is an exclusive feature that does some very special things only on these devices, is you will never put your important features on that feature because only some devices have it.

So it becomes a place that you dump odd features. Like, I mean, because seriously, I know some people use this, but is Force Touch in my Magic Trackpad? So essentially solely so that I can define words i don't recognize in safari yeah i have to say i never ever use force touch on my magic trackpad i don't i can't even remember what i would use it for right like i do i still do the three thing the three finger tap for defining words yeah it just doesn't the use isn't the same like 3d touch makes sense to me because i'm touching the screen like i'm touching the elements like that's where it makes sense to me it's like i'm pushing them like i don't feel like there is a disconnect in my brain between

the hand and the cursor on the screen i think think it's one of the things why I love iOS because I'm actually, I feel like I'm working with my hands. Yeah, you're directly interacting with what's on the screen. That's how I feel when I edit podcasts in Ferrite is that I feel like I'm, I mean, I've joked about artisanal handcrafted podcasts,

but it feels like that when I'm editing that. I am making this podcast with my hands, and that's not the same when I'm using a mouse and a keyboard. You remove that abstraction, and that's one of the reasons, yeah, that iOS is great on iPad and iPhone is that you're interacting directly. I think in the end it comes down to the fact

that this is technology that's added to an operating system after all of the interactions have already been defined. And so if they had forced touch from the very beginning or 3D touch from the very beginning on the Mac and iOS, it would be different because they would be like, well, how do we, and on all devices, how would we do this? How would we define it?

And I think it would be, it's a perfect alternate click, alternate tap, but instead it's only on some devices and it was added after the fact and it's this and that was really my biggest point is i think this is amazing clever interaction technology that's kind of being let down by the vision of the people who are building um the operating system. There's a disconnect between the invention of this stuff and the implementation. And it bugs me because I do like the technology.

And I'm not saying that the long press is the right answer. It's an answer that I came up with and that Gruber and I were both talking about. I want to give him credit. He really did spark this in me when we had that conversation. But it might not be the right answer. There are lots of complicated things about, oh, what happened to the existing long presses and how do you deal with those? Like moving and deleting apps and the home screen is one of them. There are a lot of issues there there there might be a better solution i i don't know i'm not trying to prescribe one particular answer and say that i've got it but i do feel like this technology needs to be more central and um and it's not and

it's sort of it's sort of sad and and that's that that's the trouble with 3d touch i think one of the things that makes the 3D Touch thing different to other hardware additions, because there are always hardware additions that affect the software and developers have to do things for, is that usually you see them, right? So when they make the screens bigger, you see the changes.

You're like, oh, this change is great. I'm happy this developer implemented it because now it just looks fantastic. But this is actually something that's hidden, really, until you do something to it. You have to kind of know it's there to know to take advantage of it. And discoverability is a huge issue too. This is something that came up on Twitter while we were talking about this, just back and forth with a bunch of people. And Grouper was involved. And so there were a bunch of people who follow Grouper and follow me. And therefore, a whole bunch of people saw our conversation about this and jumped in.

And one of the things that struck me is that somebody said, oh, my God, I had no idea you could move the cursor around using 3D Touch. Because it's not discoverable, right? I mean, this is an invisible feature. And that's another – I didn't even get into that in my story on Macworld. But the other problem with 3D Touch is how do you teach people how to use it? Because you won't, you know, you could never chance on it, chance upon it, right? So that's a challenge too, is how do you make this something that gets into your user's vocabulary? make this something that gets into your users vocabulary i don't know i don't know that's why they pay the uh the geniuses at apple to figure this stuff out right i mean this is i should say again um one of the things about us talking about these issues is we're not saying that we have all

the answers here uh and we're not saying this is an easy solution. I think it's not. I think if it was an easy solution, it would be solved. Apple would have solved it, right? But I do think it's not good enough. And I think it's worth pointing out that it needs to be better. And I hope that it will be better. But it's not that it's an easy problem to solve. I think it's a hard problem to solve. But I do think it still needs solving. I don't think it's done. I don't think Apple can look at the way 3D Touch works today on iOS and say, solid, we're done here. Let's just put it on the devices gradually and everything will be fine. Because I just don't think it's good enough. Do you know what is good enough? Is it one of our friends?

Well, I was going to say Ask Upgrade. Oh, yes. And then I was going to say, do you know what's even more good enough? And that's FreshBooks. Ah, well, I totally ruined that for you then. But FreshBooks is good. It's more than good enough, Mike. That's correct. Let me tell you why. Because FreshBooks are on a mission to help small business owners save time and avoid the stress that comes with running their businesses. say how much I love FreshBooks. It is not possible for me to express how easy this makes a complicated and kind of not fun part of my job, which is sending out invoices. Last week, we sent off 500 invoices at RelayFM through FreshBooks. And this is because they have created

a super intuitive tool that makes creating and sending these invoices simple. I sit down on a Friday, send out a bunch of invoices, and it's a breeze because it takes just 30 seconds to create and send one. You can give your clients tons of ways to pay you, and that's just all built in. You set it up once, and it's just attached to all of the invoices that you want to attach to, right? And you can say you want to get paid by PayPal, you want to get paid by card payment, and you can give your clients all of the information to pay you by check and to pay you by bank transfer. That's all in there. And this means that because it's right up front and you can give people online ways to pay, we integrate with Stripe, for example, FreshBooks lets you do all

of that, that you will get paid five days faster. This is something that FreshBooks have found. Their customers get paid five days faster because it's so easy for your clients to pay their invoices. You can see if somebody's looked at an invoice, you can set up automatic late payment reminders. This takes a lot of the stress and worry out of people not paying you. And also just, you know, in case they've forgotten, which happens so often that your invoice just hits an inbox that gets another thousand emails every day. Let's just make sure that it's at the front of mind of the person you're sending your invoice to. You can track all of your expenses. You can scan them using the FreshBooks app on your iPhone, for example, and it makes it super easy to organize them for later.

They have time tracking if that's something you need to do. And support is amazing at FreshBooks. It's at the core of their business. They really believe in it. If you call FreshBooks, there's no phone tree. You call and someone will pick up. And if their support team is busy, every phone in the FreshBooks office will ring until somebody picks it up and helps you out. This is how much they believe in it.

You could be talking to anyone, the VP of marketing, for example. They will pick up the phone if there's nobody available and they will help you out with what you need. That's how much they believe in it. Getting started with FreshBooks is simple. You don't need to be a numbers person. There's one number you need to know, and that's 30, because that's how many days you're going to get a free trial of because you listen to this show. There's no credit card required to do this. to claim your 30 days of unrestricted use go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and please enter upgrade in the how you heard about us section so freshbooks knows you came from this show thank you so much to freshbooks for their continued support of upgrade and relay fm i love

freshbooks jason i am one of those people who pays their invoices much faster when I get something from FreshBooks. Bingo. Yeah. There you go. If you ever send an invoice to Jason, use FreshBooks. Jim Metzendorf knows what I'm talking about. He gets it.

He knows. He knows. All right. So first question this week comes in from Mike. Mike asks, Why does the App Store show iPhone screenshots on the iPad Pro and not iPad screenshots? I don't know why, Mike,

and it's incredibly frustrating that this hasn't been fixed yet. Yep. I don't know how this bug still exists. I, yeah. There's no good reason. There's no good answer. It's dumb. Yeah, it just shouldn't be the case like

the ipad pro couldn't be further away from the iphone in screen size but yet somehow their screenshots gets mixed up in the app so it's been like this since day one on the ipad pro shouldn't be the case i don't have an answer for you mike except for it's a silly bug wes wants to know what is the process that you go through when naming a new show? I've just done that with the ring post. So I kind of will basically just keep working on it until I find something that feels right. So this can be brainstorming,

talking to people, until I find the name that works. And then there's usually a process of once you've got the name, checking that it's available in certain places, right i had the idea of the ring post and then found i could get the ring post.com and i was like once i can get that domain i'm good to rock and roll and i that's not the domain i'm using it forwards but i like ring post.fm more because it just fits with what i like um but i found a name that i really liked i could imagine me saying it i could see like how

the artwork could look and once i've kind of got that feel for it that's when it starts to become a thing yeah i agree um sometimes you end up looking sometimes you get something that feels right and then you do some searches and realize that it has meanings that you didn't anticipate um and so you can't use it or yeah, or all the domains are taken or there's a very popular podcast already with that name. I feel like sometimes there's like, oh, there was a,

somebody had a podcast with that name that hasn't posted a new episode in three years and was about a different subject. And I'm just not gonna worry about it because it's not, you know, it's not quite like there can only be one of anything. But with The Incomparable, quite like there can only be one of anything but um with the incomparable um we were talking about uh names for the incomparable back in the day and the incomparable has its name because

greg nos had the incomparable.com and i thought that was kind of a funny name and it was cool that it was a.com domain like literally that was it um but we threw around a bunch of other names and one of them ones, because we were talking a lot about in the early episodes, especially about Zeppelins, right? There's a Zeppelin on the incomparable logo. And we were joking at one point that maybe we were going to call the podcast Zeppelin Enthusiast. The problem is Led Zeppelin, right? A Zeppelin Enthusiast loves Led Zeppelin. And we were not a led zeppelin podcast and we needed to not put the word zeppelin in our name because not only is it difficult for some people to spell but it has one context really that is way outside of uh rigid airships from the early

part of the 20th century and so never mind so there's some sometimes it comes up like that too where you're like oh well this would have been a good idea. And then other times we were talking about a bunch of names for Total Party Kill, but Total Party Kill seemed right and there wasn't anything with that name. And we thought it was funny because the suggestion there is failure. A Total Party Kill, for those who don't know, in Dungeons & Dragons is where everybody dies.

And it means you've completely failed at what you were doing and uh although we've only had one of those in our entire run of total party kill and it was the very first session naturally um since then we haven't had that but it's just a funny name and i think our our logo even had for a while a a 20-sided die with a one on it, which is bad. So that fit. I was trying to remember Upgrade, and I did find one email that we went back and forth, but we'd already come down to a couple of names at that point. But my recollection is that we ended up with sort of... And Liftoff was like this too. We ended up with like a Google Doc, and we all put some names in it and in the end we had sort of five or six um that we feel we felt okay about and there were a couple that we all liked um and then i did find an email where you said okay here are these two names um that i think are the best

um based on our discussions and i i slightly prefer this one to this one but i could really go either way. And I have some concerns about upgrade. You told me I have some concerns about upgrade because it doesn't sound like, because this is fresh off of me leaving IDG, does it sound like you are making an upgrade by leaving Macworld? And my response to you was,

I don't mind that connotation at all. I think my concern was I didn't want to connotation at all i think my my concern was i didn't want to look disrespectful but as soon as you said you liked it that was the winner for me yeah right as soon as you uh because i hoped that it would be an upgrade of your life exactly that then that ended up being part of the the thinking behind the show's name is we just wanted a technology sounding name exactly um and that's what kind of what we came out of and then as is usual frank develops an incredible brand around the show and then once once we see that artwork the names never you know they're just locked in because they look it all

works the first artwork you sent me because i also saw this today when i was looking this up the first artwork you sent me i just said that's it yes right i i the clockwise artwork we went back and forth about five times because it already existed that i asked part of the problem is right when it's when it's brand new that that's where our amazing designer he just takes it and creates something but when there's a pre-existing thing there usually is a bit more tweaking because you have more of a view in your mind as to how you want it to look right like it can be a bit more tricky we'd already done whatever 70 episodes of it and and had an idea of what it what the podcast was and so that had to fit so that was trickier but with upgrade you know it was the red circle with the white um symbol and i was like yep great with the ring post i did something with frank that i've never

done before which was i sent him a a crudely drawn sketch as to how i wanted it to look because i need i know wrestling and he doesn't right like that was part of it it was like this for me i felt like had a real thing right like it had a real thing, right? Like it was a, just for me, I just, as soon as I thought of the name, I knew exactly how the artwork needed to look. And so I sent that to him. And as usual, we did an incredible job. Yeah, he did.

Knocked it out of the park as always. Okay, Lando would like to know, and Lando is actually the second person to ask this week, what is mailbagging? Now we've dealt with this before. Yep. So I pulled this straight back out of a previous show, and it's going to go back into the show notes today, which is an explanation for what mailbagging is.

I don't know why two people asked in the last seven days, but that happened. So for Lando, basically, this is what mailbagging is. When your email server is unavailable, mailbagging stores the emails sent to your mail exchange server and sends them to you when your system is back online. So it's basically storing email for you and then delivering it all. The reason this is a thing, Jason said mailbagging in the first time we did the MailRoute ad and I couldn't stop laughing. And now I just love the way it sounds and say it. MailRoute, when they updated their ad with us this year, they didn't have the mailbagging thing in there.

We put it back in because I couldn't imagine us talking about MailRoute and not talking about mailbagging. Mailbagging. All right. Tom would like to know, what type of stand do you use for your iPad Pro? So I don't use anything other than the smart cover. I don't think you do either. I use the smart keyboard, but I don't think you use for your ipad pro so i don't use anything other than the smart cover um i don't think you do either i use the smart keyboard but i don't think you use any stands i know you mentioned something that is in beta that you're looking at which is kind of a stand yeah so i've

got well i've got a um i've got the old uh origami workstation which i still uh have been using which is a stand and a keyboard holder in one for the old Apple wireless keyboard. There's a beta, a beta stand that I can't talk about, but that hopefully will be a real product soon. That is for the, for the magic keyboard that does the same thing as the origami. Basically it's a case and then you unfold it and you can use it as a stand. At home, I've also got this wooden stand that I got at Macworld Expo that is sort of a kitchen stand, but I will sometimes use that too. You can slot your iPad in there. But, you know, a lot of the time, yeah, it's just the smart cover.

Yeah, I've been, I've wanted to try and find some stands i'm thinking now like i would like to maybe have a stand of some description i would love to know if anybody is using a stand with their ipad pro uh what they're using i would be very interested uh in seeing seeing what what they are so yeah and and uh gray posted a a picture of his uh ipad workstation yeah and i uh i thought that was great because i thought about that too about like creating a uh the equivalent of my imac workstation for an ipad pro but um mostly that's that's in my kitchen mostly i will just go during the day over to the bar in my kitchen and put the iPad on a stand there.

And that's my sort of standing iPad workstation. And then I'll go back to my desk. But yeah. Yeah, Gray has kind of a standing desk iPad setup. But even he doesn't like the stand that he's using, but it's the only one that he's found that will work with the iPad Pro in the way that he wants.

Right. But yeah, so I would love to know if anybody is using anything like this. Would be great. Okay, so next up we have from Nathan, and Nathan asks, will the need to differentiate iPad Pro and non-Pro lines, because, you know, that's happening now, as we need to try and split them apart a bit. Do you think we might see 5C like plastic iPads at some point in the future? Maybe the iPad mini or something?

I don't. I don't. For the same reason the 5C went away. If the 5C stuck around, then yes, I do think we would see those. Because the 5C isn't around anymore, I don't think we'll see them. Will we see colors like the iPod Touch? I think that is more likely, but just colored aluminum instead of plastic. Yeah, I mean, the 5C didn't stick around, which suggests to me that it didn't meet Apple's expectations. I think the conventional wisdom is that perhaps it was perceived as cheap. And even on the lower cost iPad, I would think that Apple doesn't want it to be perceived as cheap and that they feel like their identity right now is that aluminum back is part of the value of these Apple products. So I think it's not likely.

Same thing as you, Mike, that if the 5C design language had stuck around, I would feel different about it. But yeah, hey, anodized aluminum colors on those things, maybe that's the approach. That might be fun. And lastly,rian uh do you think that extra features of the 9.7 inch ipad pro indicate an upgrade this year for the 12.9 or will it stick to a potential two-year cycle that we've been talking about my who knows my gut feeling is that is that um it will be upgraded to match the 9 the 97 in terms of the screen and and stuff like that in a year maybe like that that seems like a not a bad cycle um i would love to see those two get in sync um but uh that's just off the top of my head that's the thing that

struck me is that maybe we'll see a new 12.9-inch next spring, sort of a year out from the 9.7-inch being introduced. I think that what we'll see is next spring an update for both of them. So the 12.9 ends up being about 18 months old or something by that point. I think they have to do it that way for it to make sense going forward. I think releasing these two products out of sync by six months is crazy making. Just wait and then release them both.

And I think that they will go, like many iPads have recently, they will have a one year and then it will go to two years in renewal. I genuinely think that i genuinely think that's what we're going to see for the ipads line going forward um i just don't think there's enough going on in the ipad line to say that you need an update every year in all honesty i just don't see it yeah it's possible with the pros it might be a little bit different if they've got

other stuff that they want to load in there on a yearly basis. But I do think we will see an update to that 12.9 that will bring it, you know, the features that it doesn't have that the 9.7 has. And then perhaps the 9.7 will also be updated at that point. And they'll be in parity. They'll be the same, more or less, with the exception of their screen. So that's it, Jason. Yeah yeah we've reached the end yep uh from as we speak currently the ipad recording worked uh you will know listening to this episode if it did right we don't know great although in a different room than usual exactly if you want to find our show notes for this week

head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 84 but they should be in your fantastic app of choice if you'd like to find Jason head on over to sixcolors.com where you can find his great writing obviously he does more shows over at the incomparable.com too

and Jason is at jsnell on twitter j-s-n- at jsnl on Twitter, J-S-N-E double L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E and I do some stuff occasionally over at mikewasright.com. As we mentioned a couple times during the show, I'm not here next week. I'm going to be in Atlanta. But Jason will be bringing on another

super special, extra special guest to join him. As of yet, unannounced guest. But there will be someone super special. Maybe more special than me, even if you can imagine such a thing. Thank you so much to Casper, ITProTV, and FreshBooks

for helping make this show possible. And we'll be back. Well, I'll be back in another time. Jason, we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye goodbye Mr. Snell have a good time in the USA Mike what is it R-O-C-K in the USA that's it that's what I'm gonna be doing USA USA USA P-E-N in the USA is what I'm