Upgrade - 86: The Cloud With the Question Mark

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

Myke’s back just in time to discuss the minor changes to the new MacBook and attempt to figure out why the Apple Car might exist.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 86 today's show is brought to you by it pro tv fresh books and casper my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell mike welcome back thank you so much i have an immediate piece of follow-up before we even discuss any more pleasantries. It's the fastest follow-up ever. What on earth was that music last week? What was that? So we've had,

so when Chris Breen did our theme music back in like September of 2014, he did a first version and I liked it, but it was like all the famous, as anybody who's listened knows, the super synthy background. And then the foreground was the super synthy instrument too. And so my response to him was, this sounds great. It is so synthy. Could we make the lead something different, like an electric guitar or something like that? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I see that. That's a good idea. And so he did the version that everybody's heard, which is the electric guitar-ish lead instead of the super buzzy synth lead. But I kept the other version around. It's been in our upgrade dropbox this entire time i've never heard it because and the art the music the original music for this show i never heard the first time i heard it was in the released episode because you put it together yeah i just decided it would be fun since i i again my entire life when you were not around is ways of doing weird things to upgrade because mike's not here to keep it straight on the level.

So yeah, in our upgrade, there's an upgrade theme original file and then there's upgrade theme guitar, which is the one that we've used for the... But those are inside a folder and you built the thing with the Mac, the original Mac, the Mac SE boot sound and the music and the fade outs and all that.

You built those into our intro and the outro. And so those are generally what gets used, but I went back to the original as a little Easter egg and I was waiting for somebody to notice it. And the first person to notice it was Brian Hamilton. So good job, Brian for noticing it was a little different. Uh,

it's the same, you know, it's the same melody and everything. It was just a different instrument. It was like extra eighties, extra, extra synthy. Yeah.

Super, super synth. That was it. so i just came back from america again i know i don't have any more trips to america until wwdc which we're both going to be around two whole months between international trips to the u.s amazing mike amazing two months look at my record so far this year i've been i've been back and forth quite a bit. I know. I'm starting to get very excited for WWDC, just because there's been all the tickets and everything that's gone on sale. You didn't apply for a ticket, did you? No.

No. So, yeah, I'm excited. It's fever starting to hit, you know, and we're doing some different things this year we haven't spoken about RelayCon RelayCon San Francisco Jason's going to be joining us for that we're really excited

it sold out way faster than we expected it would which is amazing so everybody who's coming I can't wait to see you there there is a wait list we're hoping we're not hoping but there is a potential that some people may have to cancel their tickets right so we might have a few more go on sale but we already have way more on the wait list than we

could ever get to uh because we don't have a pretty huge huge venue yeah it so so it's it's at the mini gallery it's it's monday night we're going to do a live podcast and it's going to be the connected the three connected boys and me and serenity caldwell yep uh talking presumably about the news of the day yeah yeah so what we're thinking is we'll be breaking it all down and asking i'll be kind of hosting both sections of the show uh so i'll be talking to all of the lovely people joining me. So as I say, Stephen and Federico and then you and Ran about the events of the day.

So I'm excited this year because all of my podcasting will happen on Monday. That's it. Then I'm done for the week, which last year, it was a disaster. I was doing it all over the week. My hair was basically coming out. It was ridiculous.

But yeah, we'll be doing upgrade kind of as soon as we can after, right? Right. Maybe we'll just do it in the car. Like we'll just go for a drive, me and you. And then we'll be doing the RelayCon stuff in the evening because that's all going to go out. The whole event will be recorded

and put out as the connected episode. Matt asked in the chat room if we stream in it live i we will strongly be attempting to stream live uh and he also said we'll be in a video no plans for video uh we don't want to we don't want to buy off more than we can chew in this first instance which is why we also kept the um attendance to a modest number so we could manage that because the first time we've done something on this scale the atlanta pen show is like our pre-game for this right because this time we did it with an audience but it's a lot more controlled there than it will because we basically set up and run everything ourselves but we'll be working with the great people in the mini gallery so really excited this is our first this is our first big event i think uh yeah i think so and

it's great that that so many people signed up that's that's an amazing thing too because you know when you put down your your deposit for the venue and you think well you know are we going to be able to is anybody going to come you know we all have those fears that it's going to be like you know five of us on stage and three people in the audience right but uh that that didn't happen so that's that's uh that's great that's uh that's great it's uh the relay con uh uh series of little mini events uh rolls on which i think is uh i think is awesome so i'm i'm looking forward to it too um uh we'll have to figure out sometime we're going to do clockwise that week. But but oh, yeah, I'm sure I'll be roped in there. You may have to do that. But but yeah, you know, the live stream. I of people and drinks and things so we'll see how

the and it's in downtown San Francisco so how the internet is and all of that but it should be fun I'll probably cry on stage if we don't stream it live it doesn't matter that episode is going to come out probably pretty soon thereafter since it's a live episode

it'll probably just get posted pretty fast probably the same day I did it with the pen show i just went straight upstairs to my hotel room put it out because like as soon as i was done i was like i'm gonna get the episode out like that was how i felt like it's getting old so i just posted it as quick as i could everybody was having like a pizza party and i'm just upstairs in my hotel room on my own with a glass of bourbon that was that was how i did it right so i wanted to provide a little bit more follow-up um i was on mac power users this week talking about my uh my current ipad foray my my multiple ipad life your many ipads yeah as the episode is called mike hurley collector of ipads which i

really loved it was it was a lot of fun um kt was uh very mad at me uh it was great it's a really fun episode i i i only really felt like i scratched the surface um as to the sort of stuff that i'm doing with with my ipad now and uh this is something that i somehow feel like i've become a bit of a champion of now um i feel like I'm right there with Federico, you know, in trying to preach the ways of the iPad. So I suggest to go listen to that because I think it was a great conversation and it's going into a little bit more detail,

some of the more nitty gritty than I've spoken about in some other places about this recently. So if you're thinking about the iPad life, which many people are, I'm getting more and more people who are telling me they're going all in on ipad then that's the place to go pick up some top tips yeah that's great uh i want to mention so last week we had dan and scott on and we had a lot of fun and we got to it was almost like my version of connected

yeah it was yeah it felt very much like that it was more jovial you know yes the three-person dynamic is very different from the two-person dynamic, and I did enjoy it. It reminds me, once again, that we should probably have guests on more often, because the three-person dynamic is kind of fun, and I've enjoyed it. The times we had Greg Noss on, we had Scott McNulty on, we've had Ren on. It would be fun to do that a little bit more. But the new Kindle uh that we talked about last time does arrive later this week so perhaps we'll uh check in with our kindle

expert mr mcnulty at some point if he's available um i haven't talked to him about this but uh but so we'll do the follow-up after after that the new Kindle arrives and maybe do a little, like we did with Ren and the Pencil, like a quick visit to just follow up on the actual product now that it has arrived. It's just another thing that we're innovating on. Follow-up guests. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Who else does that? It's all part of it.

Nobody does that. It's like a follow-up, but you reach out to bring them in. Let's not do this. We don't need to name it, Jason. I wonder what we would call that. We don't need to name it. I saw some news last night that I was just interested to get your take on. So, Vox Media,

the parent company of Vox and The Verge and many more, like an increasingly growing amount of websites, launched a new kind of site yesterday yeah it's a different site it's a different thing it's kind of weird it's called um circuit breaker and is it different or is it strangely familiar well so basically it's that they're calling it a gadget blog

um so not focusing on startups and the culture of startups. There's a lot of that now, right? Looking at sites like Diverge and obviously TechCrunch and Gadget. Not only do they talk about the products, but they also talk about the companies. I like that. A lot of people do, which is why it's gone like this. But they're basically going into talking more about just the products themselves which is interesting uh you know in and of itself that they're giving that a go again

um but the thing that i find the most interesting is their publishing method it's very peculiar so it exists on the verge the verge.combreaker, and you can read the gadget-related posts. But they're putting the majority of their focus into publishing on Facebook, and it's at facebook.com slash circuitbreaker, and they've got instant articles, and they're going to be doing a lot of the live-streaming video stuff. And this is interesting to me because why why facebook uh well facebook is a huge driver of traffic and if you've ever i was i was using it i don't use it a lot but i was using

it i'm using it more because we started an incomparable group um and it's a one of these private groups which is not private except that it lets you kick people out if they're spammers so i i everybody who if you want to sign up you can just go find the incomparable Zeppelin hanger and join, and we'll approve you. But that's making me use Facebook more. And actually, it's a pretty good community area. I like it a lot. And I'm using the instant articles a little bit more and realizing, oh, yeah, this is

pretty compelling. I see why they're doing that. They do feel instant. And a lot of traffic comes from Facebook. There's a huge audience on Facebook. They are innovating with things like the live video stuff that they're doing, which is, you know, is live video new? No. Is it integrating it in this tightly with Facebook? Interesting? Yeah, it really is. So I don't know, this is, this seems like a combination of P of, of some PR spin with some reality. Like the way the New York times article about this, um, came out, it seemed like, well, it's a Facebook page instead of a blog, but it was like, no, it's a blog and it's on Facebook. But, you know, and so I think that maybe that was not quite the right balance

to set there. But as a publisher, you got to be thinking about Facebook. And I think it makes sense for them to say, what makes this thing new, since what we're really doing is sort of going back to the days, all the Verge people who started, all the people who started the Verge worked at Engadget. And the Verge at the beginning especially felt a lot like Engadget. And although they have talked over time, and the content has come around recently to being that The Verge is more than just a tech blog. And they do some other stuff. So, okay, so now you're going to do a tech blog inside what was a tech blog and isn't quite a tech blog anymore. That seems a little bit weird.

And so the Facebook angle is kind of interesting where it's like, yeah, but it's also a place for us to play, to experiment, uh, with what if we did a, a product that was much more Facebook focused than the stuff that we, that traditionally web publishers, if that you can have tradition in web publishing have done. And so I think that's, I think that's smart. I mean, as somebody who used to be a publishing executive, I guess, I look at this and think, well, yeah, if I was Nealey, if I were the people there, I would be like, yeah, let's try this Facebook stuff, right? I mean, Facebook's huge. Why don't we find some place? I mean, Facebook should probably be part of their strategy overall, and it probably is.

But why not put a stake in the ground and say, you know, for this site, we're going to really push Facebook as hard as we can. And everything that Facebook offers, we're going to do, and we're going to see what it delivers. And I think that's smart. I think it's really smart to take something that is like a new platform from an incredibly powerful source and do a trial and say, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I mean, a lot of publishers really back in the, uh, in the pre history time, uh, jumped in and did a lot of work to be on e-world, right. It went nowhere, but, uh, but you gotta try. Right. And, uh, and for Facebook, Facebook's so powerful that yeah, why not? It's a, it's a, it's a cool idea. It is funny because a lot of people will criticize the verge saying it really is a, a more of a tech blog with

aspirations, uh, than it is, uh, some, a comprehensive guide to the culture of now or whatever. Right. I mean, there, there's some critique you can make about that for a, for a site that's really about, uh, everything in the future. future, they review a lot of Android phones. But I think their content really has progressed over time. They're much more wired-like than they used to be, which I think is what they want to do. And in that sphere, having a dedicated place for gadgets is probably not a bad idea. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they really just wanted to focus on Facebook, but they put it on the verge because

Facebook's system needs it to live somewhere right like the instant article stuff it's like well it's got to be somewhere so they've hidden it inside of the verge and now it's like here's the thing I also wonder if you'll allow me to put on a tinfoil hat do you think there's any money

moving around between Facebook and Vox for this like this feels like something that facebook would be like we're gonna help you out with this well it sounds like they it's entirely possible they made a deal and they've been working with facebook on this like approaching facebook and saying well what can we do we want to make like the model like facebook outpost for content how do we do that whether there's money changing hands beyond the idea that they're going to make money because they're going to have ads and things inside and harness the

Facebook user base. Is Facebook going to drive traffic there? It's possible, but I bet they, it would not surprise me if they are working together just because it's a major publisher saying, we want to create a product that really embraces Facebook. And I think that's, I think that's, that's great. They should, they should try it. Um, you put the, you put the content on the verge because the verge has a big audience. It's not just because you need to put it somewhere, but it's got a big audience. It's a traditional web audience. Why not channel traffic there? You can sell ads against it. It's probably initially, uh, more able to make money on the web than it is some of the stuff they're doing on Facebook. Uh, so you kind of, it's like a hedge, I think in some ways just to do it that

way. But I think it's interesting. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, remember the gadget blogs? It's like the challenge with gadget blogs is so much gadgetry is just a life now. And, um, so it remains to be seen the way that the initial articles on Circuit Breaker put it down. Sort of like there are weird new places where there are gadgets and a lot of them will stink. But, you know, a lot of gadgets always stunk. And today is no different. So why not cover that and maybe cover it without the weight of The Verge? I think that may be at play here, too, where it's like, are we really going to talk about this stupid thing on the Verge?

And it's like, yeah, yeah. But in a gadget blog context, in a pure we used to do that at Macworld. Dan Warren did a blog for a while called Gadget Box, and it was the same idea. It was just like this stuff is ridiculous. But in the context of the gadget blog, it's OK, because the people who are reading this want to see the ridiculous gadgetry and uh it doesn't have to meet the weight test that maybe a full-on verge article does and so that that might be a part of it too yeah i think it's you know it's it's an interesting move uh paul miller is back yeah future paul himself the guy who was off the internet for a year he's back he's back in this he's running uh circuit breaker i'm interested

to see how it progresses um i know that i loved the gadget blog style as everybody did you know at time you know the heyday of uh in gadget and uh gizmodo i wonder if i still love it now because the trend has definitely moved away right so like there are product releases and there are company culture type things that that seems to be what's covered by most of the sites that used to be gadget blogs now so I wonder what's gonna be like I follow him on Twitter and I follow him on Facebook the circuit breaker account so I figure I'll find their stuff somewhere we'll see yeah yeah and Facebook facebook is so powerful it's just i i know a lot of uh this is i i say this a lot now but i feel like i have to do this which is like i know there are lots of things that tech nerds roll their eyes at and think aren't relevant that you just

have to step outside yourself for a minute and say yeah it's not relevant for you guess what it's relevant for so many people who aren't you. And that's the truth about Facebook. Facebook is huge. Facebook drives massive amounts of traffic. You could argue that if you're doing online media and you turn your back on Facebook, you can't succeed. Like, seriously. It is incredibly powerful. And so you ignore it at your peril, right? Even if all of us or many of us might roll our eyes at it. And, you know, that's, I've come around and that's why I set up the Facebook group for the incomparable is, you know, there are a lot of people in our audience who do not participate on Twitter.

And I want to reach those people too. And a lot of them are on Facebook. Plus the power of Facebook, the stuff that people are doing, interacting with us on Facebook is exposing what we do to the people they know who don't know about us. So it's one of those things where it's like, you know, Facebook's not my favorite thing, but I kind of need to be there as a person who's publishing things on the internet. Because, you know, even though it's not for me, it's for a lot of people. So I think we, as nerds, we roll our eyes at Facebook.

That's fine, but you ignore it at your peril. Yeah, we have a Facebook page, a RelayFM Facebook page. We basically just post stuff to it. We don't really do anything with it. It's not a group. I know that I don't want to manage somewhere else which is part of the reason why we don't have a group like how you do um but i get it i get why it's important well i didn't want to set up a forum package or something like that um and i had seen the

flophouse the flophouse group is great like legitimately great community they just raised they there's too much volume there but they raised um community. There's too much volume there. They raised money. Too much volume is not a bad problem to have, I would say. They raised a lot of money for charity. That was inspirational to me. It's been fun. It's nice to have a place

to go. Facebook has provided that. Again, I don't love Facebook, but they did a pretty good job at reaching people who perhaps had no other place that I think would probably not go to and register for some online forum attached to our website. And we have had comments on our episode posts for a long time using Discuss, and nobody uses them. But there are lots of posting in Facebook. So I guess it's good to be there. Yeah.

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So there is a updated MacBook just came out kind of middle of last week uh just the new macbook they added a new color to it there's a rose gold color now to kind of flesh out the usual color lines that they have in these products and that's about it right it had some speed updates but from the visual side no change it's speed bump um i've got it here i'm gonna write a review of it for six colors uh it's the same macbook we know except faster the the new core um the core m5 uh and there's a build or m3 and m5 processors i mean it's these these new processors seem much more capable than last year's models.

This is so it's a speed bump, but it's like I think it's like a 30 percent speed bump. It is not a it is not one of these kind of, oh, it's 10 percent faster kind of things. It's it's it's quite a bit faster, I believe. And I think the battery is a little bit larger or I mean, the capacity is a little bit more. So I think it's maybe more efficient. And so they quoted an extra hour of battery life, I think, as part of it, too. larger or i mean the capacity is a little bit more so i think it's maybe more efficient um and so they quoted an extra hour of battery life i think as part of it too um i've got the space gray one here i i definitely am uh looking forward to using it although my laptop use is very different than

it was a year ago right because of the ipad pro and i know that like serenity i think wrote something on imor about how uh you know it's weird to get the little laptop and be like, I'm not in the market for little laptops anymore, right? And I'm sort of there. I still have my Air and I use it sometimes, but it's not like it used to be where it was my main thing. So that's interesting to go back to it. I'm getting to revisit the keyboard, which I haven't used in a year. So how my feelings changed there. I don't know. I think. So how have my feelings changed there? I don't know. I think one of the fascinating things that I had is that a bunch of people just freaked out about this.

And I think it says more about the writers than it does about the product, that there was a piece on LaptopMag and a piece on Mashable that were basically like, this is a joke. One of them, the original headline that they changed was that it sucks. And the other one was the it's the biggest tech letdown of 2016 that one really got me that was i actually kind of went off on that on that story on twitter because

boy we we are really in for a great year if that's if if a macbook speed bump is the biggest tech letdown of 2016 and i i heard from some people who are like well well yeah but you know they but you know, they, they fixed the MacBook air. Um, you know, originally it had the one port and all that, and they added the ports and all that. So why didn't they do that with a MacBook? And it's like, check your history. They fixed the MacBook air after two and a half years. It was, it was right. I mean, it took time to Apple, Apple very rarely takes a brand new bit of an enclosure and a year later throws it away and replaces it with a newly redesigned one. And look at that MacBook case and tell me how you could just sort of shove a port somewhere without doing... And look at how it's built on the inside too, without doing a complete redesign. You would have to do a complete redesign of the enclosure and of the way it's laid out on the inside to do that and apple very rarely

does that but i think at the core of it the people who were freaking out that it wasn't a they didn't add a port right they didn't they didn't uh they didn't make these changes is these are people who um already didn't like the macbook they didn't like it last year and they had a whole list of reasons why they thought it was a mistake And they had a whole list of reasons why they thought it was a mistake. And they really expected that Apple would recant in 2016 and say, you're right. You're right, sir.

Yes. Yes, sir. We do need another port there. This was a failure. And Apple didn't. And so then they got really mad that Apple didn't think that that product was so desperately in need of change that they needed to mad that Apple didn't think that that product was so desperately in need of

change that they needed to invest in completely changing it after one year on the market. You know, Apple's product cycle for this product is two years. Also, I think it would require for them to kind of abort and make big changes after one year. It would require Apple to really think like our entire conception of this product was a mistake. We need to go back on it. And I don't believe they think it is. I mean, I think they might decide that when it comes time for them to revise it, maybe it was a little bit too forward. Maybe two ports would be something worth prioritizing based on the feedback.

But that is very different from saying, oh, geez, we just, you know, we give up. You're right. We made a horrible mistake. I just don't believe that Apple feels that way. Apple's like, no, this MacBook is for this. It looks like this. It does this. And if you want a different laptop, buy one of our other laptops that we make. So I thought it was an interesting reaction from people who wish the MacBook was something that it's not and are mad that their wish didn't come true. But I don't think it really says anything. Anybody who has been paying attention to how Apple handles this stuff and Apple's approach to these kind of products cannot be surprised. The only thing that surprised me was

that I was hoping the USB-C port would be a Thunderbolt 3 port. But apparently this chipset from Intel doesn't support it. And it would therefore if they wanted to add it, I think it would have required again, a revamp of what's on the inside, like a big revamp of what's on the inside. And I don't think that's in the cards. So because again, I think that you wait for the second year, you know, for year three, essentially for the second generation with some real changes to the inside. I don't know. I was surprised. Were you surprised by the reaction?

I was a little surprised that people were so kind of freaked out by it, some people, that it was just a speed bump. So I think a lot of the negative articles have come from a delusion of self. Yep. Like basically a lot of the people that were really upset with the fact that it only had one port were people that thought that it was going to have two ports because they hated it the first time around. Right. But they're like, this is not the way a Mac should be. So they're obviously going to change it because I don't like it. They're obviously going to change it. And I'm like it. They're obviously going to change it.

And I'm not trying to say that people are wrong for saying this because I was expecting in my head the next time Apple updates this laptop, there will be another port. Now, when it came out last week with only one, I wasn't surprised because that came out faster

than I thought it was going to. But I did think it would be nice if they add another one. They'll probably do that. So I'm not surprised that they didn't do it, but I'm kind of also a little bit surprised. So basically, my feeling is I wish they would have done it. It would have been great if they did. The fact that they've updated it and didn't do it, it's like, huh. But it's also like, okay, this makes sense when you look at the history of the product. I think it would have been really great

if they would have done it. I wish they would have done it because it was the biggest criticism. And the criticism is founded, right? The fact that you can't plug something in and charge this machine at the same time without a ton of adapters. And I think it was MKBHD's video.

He was like, for a device that's meant to be light and portable, the fact that you need to carry around adapters kind of like goes against it. And he was one of the people who was like, this is definitely going to have two USB-C ports when they do it up again. And in his video, he was like, well, gonna have two usb-c ports when they when they do it up again and in his video he was like well i was wrong i guess uh but like he says as like and i think that you said is look this machine this machine it's like it's a good machine it's just that is the issue with it if you think it's an issue right that it only has one usb-c port and they probably will change it in the past but now like if you were thinking about getting one now you should definitely get one because it's faster and more but now like if you were thinking about getting one now you should definitely get one because it's faster and more capable yeah like if you were on the fence now

you should get off the fence because it's a better machine unless you're somebody i mean i would argue that um what apple's saying and this is this is a very i feel like this is a i'm trying to find the right way to describe it apple has a vision for what this product is and who it's for. And it's a very, if a giant corporation can have a personal vision, it just, it feels very, very, very personal that this is, this is this product. This is our like statement about what this kind of laptop should be. And it's not every laptop. It's not every laptop they sell, but this one is this and it's for this and it is made to be what it is and so when people criticize it because it's what it is what it was intended to be and not what they want it to be okay fair enough there are certainly points to criticize about it but at the same time

you have to recognize it is part of a product line and it is meant to be kind of on the edge and pushing forward and not necessarily a mainstream product. At the same time, not to go back to the whole tech nerds need to think bigger kind of aspect. But like if you're somebody who has to travel with it with a whole bunch of dongles, I think the argument might be it's not for you. Like if you really if you really need to bring a whole bunch of stuff because you've got a lot of external devices on that maybe this is the product for you i think that the the dissonance here the cognitive dissonance that happens with this product is it looks so cool that people want it i want it but it's not for them it's not for me mad

right which is why i don't have one because it's not the machine for me. I certainly hope that the new MacBook Pros, when they come, which are rumored to be thinner and lighter, I hope that a lot of the angst about the MacBook is muted by the MacBook Pros. Like now here's another product that's got more features that also is a product you want. And now you can see this MacBook is, if you don't, if you look at this and you're like,

how am I supposed to use that? The answer is don't. Like, it's not a crime for a company to say, this product isn't for you, right? It's not a crime that, not every product Apple makes, we said this last year, is meant for everybody. It doesn't mean it couldn't be better. I've certainly criticized, especially the keyboard. I don't really like it. I get why they did it, but it's not my favorite. Other people really like it. You know, the port thing is an issue

if you use it in that way, where you need to have all those ports. But if you're somebody who just wants long battery life and plugs it in, you know, once a day at the end of the day and doesn't really use any other devices then maybe you know then it doesn't matter at all then it's totally irrelevant that that there are no ports beyond the one that you use to charge it i think a lot of people that are upset about this machine are macbook air users right because they're looking at the macbook and they're like that is what i want my air to be but you've made something more difficult right like you've you've given me more and taken away and I think that's why people want it but

I'm one of them yeah like I totally get it I think part of this too and it's interesting we talked about this with the split release of like the iPad Pro models and how it feels weird because they're sort of like one shoe has dropped, but then you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. I feel like that with the MacBook Pro. I think this will make a lot more sense when we leave this transitional period and there's a new MacBook Pro line that presumably is a lot more like the MacBook Air, but has more features than the MacBook does. I feel like I would like to believe that this summer we'll be in a place with Apple's laptops where the MacBook Air's necessity will be gone because there'll be

the MacBook and the MacBook Pro and between them, you've got your options. But right now it's sort of like a MacBook Air user. Yeah, you know, the MacBook has the retina screen and it's even thinner and lighter, but you're also giving stuff up if you go to it and the macbook pro right now it as a as an 11 inch air user especially i look at the i look at the macbook pros i'm like no it's too big no forget it and and so where do you go and the answer is sort of nowhere you sit on your hands and you complain that the macbook isn't for you because like if i was using an 11 inch air every day knowing that the macbook existed i would be very upset because you compare those two machines side by side and the air is so ugly to me like that huge silver bezel i know right like

i was looking at it last night and i was like god it's not a good looking machine anymore it did not age well and yet it's and yet my the the new the new um the new processor it's it... I actually got a faster single processor score from the new MacBook than I did for my i7 Air. Oh, wow. That's just made it a little bit more interesting to me anyway. Yeah, the Multi is still a little bit faster on the i7 Air,

but it's catching up. I mean, it's sort of sad in the sense what we're really saying is like, good news, everybody. The MacBook has finally caught up to the MacBook Air of 2014. But that's sort of... But those Airs were like marvels, right? They really were. The speed in those things, which, you know, it was...

So many people have called them the best Macs that Apple ever made for very good reason. I mean, the i7 11-inch Air, it's like, it's so small and it's so powerful it's kind of amazing yeah um i have one of those and no mac has ever made me happier than that machine did like i was able to do so much with it and it was so tiny like i just love that thing but let's park this i want to talk about the macbook pro because i think we were all expecting is it in the parking lot it's in the park we'll put in the macbook in the parking lot now okay don't run over it yeah and then we're getting the electric version orange cones are out which is unplugging the macbook pro from the charging station and we're driving anyway we're really pushing this metaphor i think we're all expecting macbook pros to come out between that

event and wwdc and now when i look at this i see that's less likely now because why would you have two separate quiet laptop announcements i feel like it's a bit much so now i look at it and i think to myself i expect the macbook pros to be really forward thinking again right they're going to make that big jump they're going to be all in beautiful colors i think there's your there's your thunderbolt uh three and perhaps an external retina display that to go along with it and like impossibly thin and light i think they're going to do what they did with the mac pro they're going to do that like video on stage and phil schiller's like innovate anymore my ass like i think they're going to do that because that's the audience for it it's a good good audience, right? A hundred percent of iOS developers use Macs, right?

Because you have to use Xcode. And people will lose their minds when this thing is like as thin as a MacBook Air, right? Like, you know, that's what everyone wants. Imagine if it was that. Imagine how crazy they would go. And we'll drive an external retina display. Yep. That, you know, the Thunderbolt 3 display or whatever it is that it will drive.

That would be, wouldn't that be great? That would be a great mic drop if it came out and said, hey, the Mac, let's talk about the Mac. You all use Macs. What if we have, look at these new MacBook Pros 13 and 15, and they're thinner and lighter, and they really remind you of a MacBook Air, don't they? But look, these are Pros.

They don't stand on ports. We've got USB, standard USB. We've got USB 3, but those aren't even just USB-C. Those are Thunderbolt 3, and they have this incredible number. And look, we made an external monitor. Woo, everybody goes nuts for the external retina display that's driven by it. But guess what? We know Mac Pro people would want to drive that monitor too.

So here's a new Mac Pro, and it's got Thunderbolt 3, and it does all this. Woo, everybody goes crazy. I could see that. I i could see that i really can see that these machines will be ready to run mac os yes mac os jason explodes into a ball of flame yeah exactly so i could i could i could see it uh i could see that happening i i mean i i think they could release it but if these really are mac pro is a big product if they've really redesigned it entirely, why would you not use the stage to do it? And that would be a perfect audience to do it,

especially if you have some other stuff like a Retina display and a Mac Pro behind it. I just think if they have done what we expect them to have done, which really is overdue, which is completely redesign the MacBook Pro, you should be doing that in front of an audience. And there's no better audience than the wwdc audience who are going to be packing out that bill graham auditorium civic auditorium yes because they'll probably get the majority of uh attendees right

there won't be overflow rooms or there might be but like there won't be as much of a need because isn't the uh the capacity larger than the capacity they use typically? I think the base capacity of the Civic Auditorium is 8,000. So it's larger. And they have, what, 5,000 developers, right? Yeah, I'm not sure Overflow even would make sense because it's like a mile away. You can't like, it would be, I mean, maybe they'll open Overflow in Moscone West for people who don't want to walk over there and wait in line or something. But no, it'll be a big audience.

And it would be a good time for them to do it. My only hesitation there is that it's going to be a packed keynote anyway, right? Because they're going to talk about presumably new Mac OS, iOS, watch OS. Yeah, but they won't have the music thing, right? So, like, you'll have all that space taken. Like, it will be out. There's not going to be something. I don't think there's going to be something like apple music on stage this time right so you slot that in there for that and instead you put do a mac a mac update and genuinely

i think you need 10 minutes tops for this mac part and we should say sometimes people are informed by like sources and stuff about um and they can't say so. And they seem very assertive that things are going to happen. And it's actually because they've got sources. I can say with a hundred percent accuracy that I have no sources telling me these things. I am just speculating. And I feel like the first test that it passes is, is it plausible that they could do this?

And I think the answer is yes. Will they do it? Who knows? But it certainly seems plausible that this would be the way to announce a a macbook pro and maybe some other mac stuff yep we're purely going for upgrade was right in this uh all right scenario but this is this is based on our uh viewing and and understanding of the way that keynotes have run in the past i think this seems very plausible let's talk about something that's less implausible. But before we do that, let's talk about FreshBooks. One of my very

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All right, so I listened to the uh secret subscriber podcast six colors which is weirdly one of my favorite podcasts and i say weird it shouldn't be weird i say weirdly because it's just so many things that are very different about it right like one is i do a tech podcast with you and i listen to clockwise which you and dan are both on and really all that the show is is kind of just like your meeting, I guess. Like, it's a funny show in that regard. But I just really love it. I think it's just because I like you and Dan so much.

I think I like the tone of it because it does feel a little bit different. Like, the pressure's off. It's roughly a half an hour, but we don't really keep to that. But we try to keep it short. So it's usually a half an hour, but we don't really keep to that. But we try to keep it short. So it's usually a half an hour, maybe a little bit less. And it is just like, yeah, what are we working on? What are we thinking about? What's going on?

It's, yeah. So I encourage you. It's one of the many things that you get if you are a Six Colors subscriber. You get access to that podcast plus a fun newsletter that we do. And yeah. All the great perks. Yeah. And maybe more coming who knows

but uh but i think those are our fun little bonuses for people who who subscribe to six colors um yeah so we talked about the apple car last week yep you did and this was prompted by the fact that uh both of you had written stories um about this yeah and that world in the last couple of weeks about the apple car yeah um so i wanted to kind of just throw some thoughts in um about the apple car uh that my my first thought is that all of this is ridiculous uh to be talking about right now we got an ask upgrade question that was like literally hey mike doesn't drive doesn't have a car what is mike can mike gin up any enthusiasm about the Apple car? And I think the answer is no, right?

Because it's not only that, but it's also very far away and kind of hard to picture, right? Yeah. So it was Gareth who asked if I would get a driving license. And I mean, I'm going to get a driving license probably before the Apple car comes out anyway. Like when me and Nadine start a family, like I'm just going to need to have a car. So at that point, like i'm just gonna need to have a car um so

at that point like it would just make sense to have a car so i'll just get a car uh well james thompson and his wife have a have a car but he doesn't drive so she she does all the driving but they do have a car yeah so it's like you know eventually i'll do it it's just where i live in london and with the way that my life is i I just don't need one. So I don't have a driving license. So I've just never gotten around to it. But anyway, I will have one before then. Uh, I don't know if I would get a license just because Apple have a car, because this is the other part of it. Like one of the really weird things is I buy Apple products because I like Apple products and because I also have like a big part of my job based on what they do. So I have as many Apple products as I can buy.

I try and get all the new stuff so I can talk about it intelligently. Don't think I necessarily want to buy a car, though. Right. Like a car is going to be really expensive and it would be weird like what do i have to do like spend like 60 grand so i can talk about the car and upgrade like that's just one thing just as doing what i do why this is a weird thing for me but like we can park that because no one really cares about that but we can we literally park that car we can park that in the parking lot yeah macbook is sitting right there

don't run it over watch out for your parallel park against the macbook but this whole thing about apple potentially building a car makes me feel really uneasy um i don't know if this is the right thing for apple to do it it's a very strange product market to get into. It was way easier to jump to phones than it was to jump to cars. And I know that you guys were saying that cars are becoming more like technology products as they're being charged, you know, powered by batteries and full of software. Yeah, there's like a convergence I feel like that's happening where if you look 10 or 15 years out, you can see that it's just as important to be good at software and sensors and batteries and power management as it is to be good at drivetrains and tires yeah but it's very one of the things that i keep hinging on is it's very unlikely for a pocket computer to kill you um and this is some the real problem with cars they can kill you and they can kill other people um and i think you know that i wonder if there's going to

be a backlash against this car advancement at certain points like the point where you have to reboot your car while you're going down the highway like that's going to start upsetting people you know and things like this are going to happen the more that trends towards software the more it's going to trend towards there being issues right right? Right. I mean, the standard has to be higher, certainly, right? You need aspects of it. Although my understanding is that this is not outside the realm. I mean, this is what people do

now, is that you have levels, layers of the software that have to be rock solid because they are working in real time to make your car function. And then there's like the interface stuff that if the app quits, it's fine. But it is a challenge. I mean, there are so many-

But it's still just people making it, you know? And I know that people make drivetrains, but there's a lot of physics in there. People make the software that's in cars today. Cars today have software too. I know. People make that stuff too, right? But I think the software that we're moving towards

is more embedded than it is now because at its fundamental point there's still things moving and science happening to make the car move that's sure right there's science happening anyway i'm starting to i'm starting to get into something that i'm not uh i'm not smart enough in so i'm going to back out of this conversation now there's this one part i think it's hard to have um it's hard to picture it because it's such a leap for them i i and i mean i have a hard time connecting the dots honestly this is why i start i start with like i understand why they're investigating it if i were at apple and i had i knew i had you know maybe almost 200 billion dollars in cash i mean like a huge amount amount of cash and a lot of money coming in,

but want to explore new areas because we know that tech companies that don't explore new areas lose those new areas to new companies and they start to die. So you want to place your bets. And the car thing is really interesting. And if you're Apple,

you've probably got a pretty good view of Apple's skills. You're like, we're awesome, right? So why couldn't we do that? And I see that initial thought of, here's where we could go. The car is interesting. Cars in the future are going to use things that we're good at. We have very little confidence in the existing car makers. We see what Tesla's doing, and we think, well, wait a second. It's much more likely that Tesla in the long run is going to succeed. Maybe this isn't true, but I'm just trying to get in the mindset here. And we could do that too. And we could eat the

lunch of these old car companies that have to be busy selling cars today instead of trying to picture what the car is going to be in 10 years. I totally see that. And I think even spending money to make that bet is probably right. And you look at what Tesla has done. Tesla has its charger network. Tesla has its dealer network. It's not dealers. They're like Apple stores. It's got its retail network.

This is nothing that Apple could not do to build all this stuff out. It absolutely could. It just would require a sustained effort at a large scale along the lines of what they did rolling out retail and have this huge hardware effort going on where they're going to, I guess, build cars eventually. I can see how you would do it and how you can imagine getting to the point where it's a thing. And then I have the cloud with the question mark where it's like, then what happens? How do we get to the end and what is that end game? And that's where I have a hard mark where it's like then what happens like how do we get to the end and what is that end game and that's where i have a hard time seeing it and and maybe that's just because i'm not a car guy and because i am not spending all my days with a bunch of brilliant people at

apple talking about what this product is going to be where i might get it for me it's like yeah i can sort of see why you would do it but i I'm having a hard time connecting the dots. Like the conversation about the money, spending the money is, is pointless because they have the money. Like there's no amount of money that they don't have. Right. It doesn't matter. Like it just doesn't matter because they could probably do a space probe if they wanted to anything because nobody has more money than them.

Right. Like it's just just they can spend they could spend 40 billion and next quarter they're fine again like it the money conversation there's just no point in even having it because normal rules that do not apply to this company right right because they get way more money in than they can ever spend it's and that's i guess i guess what i'm saying is that that's that's why i i get the idea that look if you think there's an opportunity in the car then you can do it like if you're apple you can just do it or even if you just want to spend some money like you do you know we just like we've got too much money you might as well spend it on something let's build a car the reason we're

talking about this is not just that dan and i wrote about it but because there were there were two pieces motor trend did a big thing where they did a mock-up of what they thought the apple car was like which is so ridiculous deals with all the same issues that any mock-up of an imaginary product does which it's based on today and not based on the future and so it's a remix of existing stuff instead of a new product and that's why there's an apple menu in the upper left hand corner of the windshield but like they just wouldn't build a car that looked like this because it looks ridiculous no no it's just like the iphone mock-ups that look like an iPod with a click wheel. And yeah, it's just, it's, it is, that's, it's one designer.

I don't want to, I don't want to run down the designer because the designer seems to be a very talented person, but this was a job to do a concept for a, for a website and, you know, and not build a car in the real world over the course of five years. And so it shows because that's just how it is. Also, MacRumors had a story that I saw because Marco Arment linked to it and said, whoa, Germans are involved in the Apple car? Now I'm interested, which made me laugh. But there is this rumor that Apple has got a car lab in Berlin now

and that they have actually recruited a bunch of people who are sort of unhappy with the stodginess of the German car world. And they want to do awesome new stuff. And that Apple has sort of swept them up and is putting them at work in an Apple lab in Germany, which I thought was interesting. And those stories made me think, OK, well, let's talk about the Apple car again, basically. But it's weird. And the reason I find it fun to think about it and talk about it is

mostly because i don't understand it and i am trying to figure out what it means and um that that is an interesting place to be and it's kind of a fun place to be in a way but um it's uh it's uh it's weird some of the comparisons to tesla in this argument don't work for me because you know it feels like a lot of like sure Apple could do it because Tesla does it but this is more important to Tesla because this is all they do it's true right like would

Apple build supercharging stations across the US probably not because they're also going to have this product in other countries so they have to then build the infrastructure in countries? Why not? Tesla has done that too.

Yeah, but I feel like Apple would take their usual stance of, we're so popular, people will build the infrastructure because of us. That's possible, although I think we're going to get there. There's a question about the Tesla superchargers too, is what happens when there are four different electric cars on the market from four different companies, all of which require a fast charging system. Are there going to be different fast charging systems everywhere? Or at some point, is it all going to kind of coalesce down into a single fast charging standard, maybe with adapters?

I feel like if you're Apple, you do a deal with Tesla to just use their superchargers. It's possible. Why would you build your own infrastructure? At a certain point, there's not enough space on the side of the roads. that's one thing but of course you want to take advantage of the talent at apple and then are you draining the talent or distracting apple from all of its other products because they have these people who are excited to work on the new toy i have wondered if the way that you may answer a lot of these questions is that apple creates a spin-off company in some regard that does some of this stuff even if it's just a wholly owned subsidiary yeah that that does

it but then i i think you what you lose is the connection to to apple you know okay so so the other thing that could be good and bad right yeah the other thing that's a play here that i don't want to get into too much is that one of the reasons this is this is happening is this motivation for growth that like wall street demands growth and yeah and i i think it's the danger for a lot of a lot of public companies is they lose focus on their key products because they they can't just focus on how great they are like the iphone throws off all this money huge profits um but instead of making you know and they are they are working to make it better i it's not a direct instead i shouldn't say that but they lose some focus looking at other areas because they need to be worried about growth and not just sustaining their incredible business that they've

got but that's just that's the that's the the name of the game if you make things powered by electronics that that bleep the next big market is is vehicles i i guess believing where else is it like vr but okay like vr is way more software than hardware and i'm sure apple's investigating that one too right but yeah the cars i this that's what i've been saying is is i see why you look at the cars and are like yeah we probably should do that right software sensors it's like the as jeff williams said the ultimate mobile device there are skills that apple has that fit into the car thing and if Tesla can do it I mean this thing is if Elon Musk can take his money and and do it with Tesla

It's like Apple's got way more money than that They could they could totally build that but do they have the vision do they have the leadership? And is it gonna be a distraction from their other products? And I think that's the I think that's the real mystery here The vision and leadership thing is is exactly the the other part of it it's like okay you have the money but like do you really care right like i i get the sense that elon musk cares a whole lot about space and about electric cars right i i get that sense it's like what what is is this at apple do they have that do they care are they going to

commit everything they possibly can to this i hope they. That's the only way to do this right. But, you know, is this an end round or an end run around the car companies where they just can't move fast enough for these and these tech companies can eat their lunch? Maybe. Maybe so. I mean, I wouldn't put it past them. The car companies have never been perceived as being particularly cutting edge, or at least not in our lifetimes. And I know they're trying, but they're the incumbents. It's very hard as an incumbent to throw away everything and start from scratch. And so you end up managing things for your existing products and your existing markets. And it becomes very hard to have a sustained effort to do something dramatically new. And somebody like Apple that has zero car sales right now doesn't have to do that. And

Tesla started there too. So there are a lot of advantages to not being a car company to make a future car. But they also don't know anything about the car market. So they have to learn that stuff. I don't know. I don't want to talk about it more than maybe we've already done, but it's just, it's out there and it's weird and there continue to be stories about it. And who knows? I think it's, I think it's going to be,

you know, four years before we see something if that. So, yeah, there's just one, one more point I wanted to make, right? What if the Apple car will be to cars as the Apple TV is to TVs?

Like we spoke for years about the tv set that apple was definitely making no we didn't some people did but like it was it was assumed in rumors in the same way right that apple were going to be making a tv set and a lot of the objections that we had to apple making a tv set are the same objections that people have for making a car. Retail stores won't be able to handle it. Prices are too high for quality. And does Apple really want to get into this business? It's the exact same arguments.

And I just wonder if it might not be an entire car that they do. I don't know. I think they want to make an entire car, but I do wonder... I think they also wanted to make an entire TV, though. I believe that they did. I don't know. I think they want to make an entire car, but I do wonder. I think they also wanted to make an entire TV, though, as well. I believe that they did. I don't know. It never made sense in the way that they did. Making a car doesn't make sense either.

I think it does to a certain degree, but I would say that, you know, I think it's possible that one of the end games here is not that Apple makes an Apple-branded car, but that Apple ends up being the source of something that's used in a lot of other cars, or that Apple ends up having a partner. But at the same time, Apple doesn't work well with others. So every time I try to hedge this and say, well, maybe the end game isn't that Apple makes a car, I then get to the point where I'm like, really, is Apple going to work with somebody else? I kind of can't see that either. So yeah, I honestly think one of the biggest things that

stands between us and the release of an Apple car is that our perception of Apple and what it is and what it can do has to change. And fortunately, there are like four or five years probably before any car like this would come to market where they have a chance to lay the groundwork for that, because it will require a lot of groundwork being laid. And the difference between Apple and Tesla is that everybody is going to be going nuts if there's an Apple car. And Tesla was able to start small with a very small run and learn as they went. And I feel like the impetus on Apple, like Apple, they may not do this, but I think what people are going to want from Apple, the expectation is that Apple is going to be able to sell a car right away at volume.

And it's not going to happen. It seems impossible to happen. And even Tesla is struggling with the new Model 3 to actually, you know, really ramp up the volume. And it's taken them several years and several models to get there. And I don't think it's likely that Apple is going to be able to just roll a brand new Apple car off the assembly line in 2020, first thing, and make, you know, a million of them, right? I just just it seems unlikely to me and i think that's what people will demand because it's apple so i don't know how they i don't know how they navigate that what did steve jobs say 10 of the phone market yeah that was all they wanted you

know yeah well i think that i think that's the the way you have to do it is to say look i know people are really excited about this but this is going to be only in the u.s and only you know and it's going to be really expensive and it's going to be only in the certain areas that it's even going to be available because because in reality that's all they're going to be able to make at first and then people howl at the price and all that and say it's a failure oh and i mean it may follow that same pattern who knows okay it's that time again it is ask upgrade time this week's ask upgrade is brought to you by casper the online retailer of premium mattresses that you can get yourself for a fraction of the price that you'll find in stores casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry by slicing the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing

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Thank you so much to Casper for their support of this show and RelayFM. It's time for some uh ask upgrade wow yeah i haven't been here uh the lasers have been building up so that's high powered lasers high powered lasers and the first question comes from mike mike this is not me he's loving his 9.7 inch ipad pro but wondered if you should get a screen protector for it jason what do you think And the first question comes from Mike. Mike, this is not me, is loving his 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but wondered if he should get a screen protector for it. Jason, what do you think?

I have never used a screen protector on anything, but don't let me be your guide. Maybe I'm a bad example. What about you? Do you use screen protectors? No, I do not. Why do you not? Well, they get in the way.

They're hard to apply. They have bubbles and stuff. I tried once with one that cut like cut the glare, it was like a non glare thing and it was never really satisfying. And, and, you know, the glass is pretty tough. And I do have a cover, right? So I, the glass is very rarely exposed when I'm not using it and for my iPad pro. And that's, I think that's enough. So for me personally, I don't, I don't see the value in having a, like a, a protector on it all the time.

But I do recommend that somebody have a cover on it because that's when, that's when it can, you know, scrape on things more than when it's in your hands. You know, like these days I drag a piece of plastic over the top of my ipad screen all the time and there's never any problems with that you know i've never had a scratch in a screen from one of these devices i i don't think screen protectors

are necessary um i've never run into any problems with them like this you know i just think that i think it's fine i don't think you need to do it. I understand why someone might use an anti-glare thing maybe so they can read their iPad Mini by the pool but just as a protector for the screen scratching

I really don't think you have to worry about it. These smartphones these days have such incredible glass. It's so difficult to scratch it. You really have to go to town to try and scratch one of these things. So unless you're in a line of work, which might mean that you would scratch your screen easier than others, then maybe you should consider it. Otherwise, I don't think you need to worry about it. Yeah.

Neil asked, and I love this question, a colleague I convinced to switch to the Mac was baffled by the DMG mechanism for distributing software. How do I explain this to them? This is one of the biggest inconsistencies and problems when trying to get somebody to switch to the Mac. And part of this is just in the fact that the system is mad and it makes no sense because you have

three different ways now of which installing apps can occur to you you can get them from the app store or they're somewhere installed from like dot pkg package files like on windows right you just double click it and it installs and some are dmgs like this is the one of the biggest problems of trying to switch somebody to the mac, is trying to explain this system. Because the disk image system for installing software doesn't really make sense. Sorry, everyone. I don't think it makes sense why you would open something

and then take it out, but you can also run it from there. And then you have to eject the disk image. Yeah. And then throw away the, it's dumb it really should be um you know some other an archive that you double a zip or something and you double click and it unzips and then you copy it to your application folder the advantage of the dmg is that it appears uh you can put like a background you can have a little alias to your applications folder so you tell people to drag it and that's sort of become the convention but i i think it doesn't make a lot of sense. And the

fact that you have to do the cleanup afterward is really annoying. And I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't done more to make this better. But I think the problem is, politically, since the existence of the Mac App Store, it's very hard to get support support within apple i suspect to make it easier to install software that isn't from the mac app store well because when the mac app store was created that was their solution that was what they thought and what everyone thought would mean that this was the only way you needed to distribute applications but that's not how it's turned out no and and so one of the problems i think is that not only is the mac app store a disappointment but it's actually stalled perhaps perhaps, progress in other areas.

Because, yeah, you should be able to get a thing that has an app in it and double-click it and have it say, hey, this is an app package. Would you like me to put it in your applications folder? And you say yes, and it does it, and it deletes it, maybe, or puts it in the trash, or it lets you choose whether you want to put it in the trash. Something that's like an installer thing uh and uh nope nope yeah you know i don't like installers that put that spew files everywhere um that's one of the advantages of os 10 always was like you just drag the app in and it's installed and you throw it away and it's uninstalled

and very few apps come with an installer package but at the same time the simple like click on a link download a thing uh and install it has this dmg thing in the middle which is uh not not not great i know that there are going to be people that are screaming about the benefits none of the benefits outweigh the the issues and with this system especially in just trying to help somebody switch it's agree. It confuses so many people. Non-computer nerd people are completely baffled by DMGs. Completely. And I don't blame them. They are baffling.

I know I was when I switched to the Mac. And then I'm using my computer all day and I look in the Finder and it's got like, that disk image of that thing that I downloaded at 9am is still sitting there because I didn't eject it. How stupid is that? I literally have just ejected one from this morning, which was even a disk image which then loaded a package file.

So it's like, that makes it even worse. Ridiculous. I hate it. Jorge asked, or Jorge, I'm going to go with Jorge, it sounds nicer than the way that i said it the first time sorry if your name is jorge i'm gonna go jorge uh can uh can we broke artists expect pencil integration in upcoming versions of cheaper ipads i'm sorry jorge i doubt this for a

very long time i agree the apple pencil is part of the pro line and apple need some differentiation for the pro line to make it attractive to people the pencil i think is the number one thing that apple is trying to promote more than the keyboard more than anything else i believe is like this is what makes this a pro device it has this pencil which you can draw on and take notes on um i think that that is the thing that they're using to try and make it stand out because it visually stands out right you can take a picture of the pencil and it's like on the using on the ipad and it's like whoa look at that thing because you can't take a picture of speed you can't take a picture of true tone like you can't do that but you can with the pencil and i think until there are more things, maybe in the future,

that make the Pro line more attractive, that's the only place you're going to find the Pencil. I'm sorry to say. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that that's Apple's strategy here, is that the Pencil is a feature of the higher-end products. I actually also believe it makes the product more expensive right now anyway,

because the screens have a bunch of new technology in them. I think so, yeah. So I think it's a double-edged sword and then kind of a a leading question on from this aaron wanted to know what we think the chances are of a ipad mini sized ipad pro this fall i i don't i just don't see that yeah i don't think they need to have ipad pro in all sizes like it comes in every color like it's not necessary i don't think i don't know what you could do with a 7.9 inch ipad pro like even the 97 is a stretch at like what makes this pro like you can't make a keyboard for it because that's just ridiculous at that size right i recommend using the the 7.9 inch ipad pro with the 12.9 inch ipad pro keyboard just.9 inch iPad Pro keyboard just for laughs.

It's like, what can you do with that one? I don't know what you could do to make that pro, to be honest. Aaron says, what are the chances? So I'm going to say 2% because there's always a chance, but it's not going to happen. I'm going to go with 1%. Okay, fine. You win. And finally, Kenny this week, having spotted a picture that i posted on my instagram

of me eating at waffle house in atlanta asked how do you take your waffle house hash browns jason so we have a lot of issues here right hash brown this is for you not not me i think but i want to see if you have an answer so first off hash browns are complicated because it can mean different things to different people in some places hash browns are like um potato patties and in other places they are the kind of grated potato that is fried this is not a hash brown to me a hash brown is a compacted thing right which i would call i don't even know what that is a potato pancake uh hash brown makes more makes the most sense that's what it says on wikipedia as a way to try and uh differentiate it there you go hash brown patty what are hash browns like in mcdonald's i don't know i don't eat at mcdonald's all right because this is how

they look in in the uk but anyway but so i don't know you might have had a mcdonald's breakfast in your lifetime who knows uh when i was a kid i occasionally would have a mcdonald's breakfast and i just got the pancakes in the styrofoam container where you try to use the plastic knife to cut the pancakes and you cut through the bottom of the styrofoam and you get maple syrup all over your pants. Yeah. Good times. Casey, I know you're out there. You know the answer to this question. What are hash browns like in McDonald's breakfasts? So my hash brown preference when we go, I haven't ever been to a Waffle House, although I've been past one. I've never been in one.

But when I go to breakfast places, which I do occasionally, I like the, you get the grated potato hash browns. And I like them well done. I like them crispy and not soggy. I don't like the soggy hash browns. I want them super crispy. That's how I like them. Basically, one of the reasons this comes up with the pan show is there is a Waffle House in the parking lot of the hotel.

Well, that'll do it. So, you know, you'll go there. And my hash browns, I just have them regular as they come because Waffle House, they have all these things scattered and chunked and it basically means that they put different things in them i didn't want any of that like i'm sure there's some of them that are nice but i just wanted it as as plain and simple uh as they could make it and that was how i had it they are uh thank thank you to doug for the link to the mcdonald's wiki good lord which has the hash brown and it's a patty there you go it's a potato patty

and I know why they do that because it's you can move it around well yeah you can have them frozen and just take them out and heat them up or whatever they do to them and right the shredded potato stuff is harder harder to make and not as affordable but

they just say put out your hand and then they just scoop some hash brown into your hand. The Waffle House is a very southern thing. My family, I used to have an uncle who lived in Florida and I definitely saw them there. Also, I learned a very funny thing. There's also a chain of breakfast restaurants there. A competitor to Waffle House called Huddle House. And it made me laugh because Huddle House I think literally one of their strategies when they started was that they could take over old Waffle House locations and only change a few of the letters.

That's so smart. I love that. Right? And there was a Huddle House down the road from my aunt and uncle in Orange Park, Florida, that was clearly an old Waffle House where they had just taken some of the letters off the Waffle House

and replaced them with new letters that spelled Huddle House. And it made me laugh, actually, because it's like, well, that's one way to do it. It's just two. They have a corporate logo and stuff, but I believe perhaps it started with them

saying, what can we do to be very much like the Waffle House? And you only have to change a few letters. I like that strategy yeah brilliant i gotta say right for i like waffle house for when i have it once or twice a year yeah you know because it's so what i imagine right like it's everything i imagined as joe steel says waffle house is sketchy i agree i i. I will always opt for a Cracker Barrel over a Waffle House if I have to choose because the Cracker Barrel is, yeah, I suppose it's more kind of corporate and they want to sell you a rocking chair. But I do enjoy the Cracker Barrel.

I have no idea what Cracker Barrel is. Cracker Barrel is a cheese here. Yeah, well, Cracker Barrel is also a, it is a cheese, but it's also a chain of restaurants that are Southern style. CrackerBarrel.com wants to know my location i will not allow that yeah well they want to find they want to find you find me here's your local cracker barrel it's in new york or something i don't know but look i you know i know waffle house is is kind of terrible food. That's why I like it though. Right. Like when I come to America, I like to have good American food

and I like to have crappy American food because I'm not American. Yes. Right. So you can tell me all the great American food and I've had lots of it, but I also like stereotypical horrible American food because it's like part of the tourist attraction yeah is crap food absolutely

luminous cheese you know when i'm winning the south i want all the stuff that's bad for you i want you know because what what is the point of that so i i totally hear you so waffle house i think if you're in atlanta you should go to the waffle house right and it's in the parking lot of the hotel like you know so there you go right next to the apple car and the macbook pro it's easy peasy so there you go yeah we're gonna put the waffle house in the parking lot we're gonna put this whole episode in the parking lot you can find our show notes this week over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 86 if you want to find jason online go to sixcolors.com or the incomparableparable.com. You can find him on Twitter. He is at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L-I-M-Y-K-E.

Thank you again to our lovely sponsors, Casper, FreshBooks, and ITProTV. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody. say goodbye Jason Snell. Goodbye everybody!