Upgrade - 95: Don't Bring the Pain without the Benefit

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

Apple ditches the Thunderbolt Display, Jason takes macOS Sierra for a spin, and we debate the merits of Apple removing old technology from its products.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 95 today's show is brought to you by the lovely folk over at mail route fresh books and ministry of supply my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell. How are you feeling? Pretty good, my man. Clearly, I'm still holding over some of this conference flu, but I'm getting better. I'm getting better. All right. That's good. That's good. I didn't get that this year, but I think that's home field advantage,

being from here, perhaps. These are my germs that I'm in, so I i'm doing good now you guys all have my germs well also you don't you don't spend as much time in and around the conference stuff as everybody else does i come home i have to come home every night i'm not gonna rent a giant expensive hotel room in san francisco so i come home every night so yeah i'm not i'm not out super late and i'm sleeping in my own bed and eating my own breakfast cereal and all those things. So I, my-

And then you don't sit in a metal tube for 10 hours. And I don't sit in a metal tube and yes. And of course I also just walk around in a hazmat suit. That's the other thing. If you've ever seen in June, a guy in a hazmat suit in San Francisco, that is actually Jason. It's really weird. We all judge him for it,

but he does it anyway. And I don't get sick. This is probably a good move. It's crazy like a fox. That's right. Let me tell you something else that's crazy. Apple using the line there are a number of great third-party options available for Mac users, in reference to them discontinuing the

Thunderbolt display last week. Yeah. It kind of came out of nowhere. It seemed like they just put out a press release to a few publications. Yeah, gave a statement to a few people. A statement. Look at that. Very fancy. Now, the conspiracy theory among us, me,

would say that what we have here is apple has discontinued the thunderbolt display as they intended to because they had a new display ready yes i'm not ready to announce said display yet and i've seen a couple of reports that that i think i saw john pakowski um say in a tweet not even a story just in a tweet like there is a new apple display it does have a gpu and you know it will come at some point and that is the rumor is that they have a fancy retina external display ready to go but um they don't have the products to go with it that that that's what i think perhaps is that it was ready but they just didn't want to keep making this old one or or the design of that one is is is done but they haven't made

them yet. I mean, there's all sorts of production issues, especially if they're trying to orchestrate something where there are new Macs and this new display and they all go together. But at some point, you've got to stop making this old display. I sort of feel like at some point, they need to stop making the old Mac Pros too, right? That at some point, why would we make any more of these? At some point, why would we make any more of these? How many can they be selling of a non-retina external display that's got the old mag safe on it so you have to use an adapter? I mean, it's unchanged since it was released five years ago. So, yeah, they make this statement about third-party options because right now they don't have a replacement for it.

I don't know. I mean, of course there are third-party options. I bought third-party options because right now they don't have a replacement for it i don't know i mean of course there are third-party options i i bought third-party displays are there people out there who only ever buy apple branded displays definitely i don't know yes there are definitely i guess um there are a lot of them right apple focus websites there are lots of good monitor options that are not i look i used a thunderbolt display at Macworld for several years, and I liked it a lot. Stephen has one. And when I, well, yeah, his is dented now. Yeah, he dropped it off of bed. But when I set up my home office here, before I got the iMac, I had a MacBook Air, and I docked it.

And I had an external monitor on an arm, and I bought a Dell external monitor. So it's like a way better deal than the Thunderbolt display because Thunderbolt display was really expensive. And even though I was replicating my setup from my office in my home, there was no way I was going to buy a Thunderbolt display. Yeah. When I had that short-lived Mac Pro, I bought one of the Dell 20 something, maybe it was 23, I think, inch monitors. And I was really happy with that. There was no way that I was going to fork out the money for one of these things.

It just doesn't make sense to me. It was a grand, it was like, you know, that's a lot of money for a display, man. Yeah, I mean, it was what I loved about it using my laptop was you plugged in power and Thunderbolt. And that was it. Everything else was so you could have Ethernet plugged into the display. You could have USB devices plugged into the display.

You have Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt, maybe not Firewire devices plugged into the display. All of these external. So it was a docking station. all of those external devices plugged in. And then you bring in your laptop and you go, you know, clip with MagSafe, then later clip with the MagSafe adapter, and then boop, plug in Thunderbolt, set your laptop down. That's it. You're docked. You've got the ethernet lined up, you know, whereas before I would plug in multiple things. I'd plug in like four or five different things audio the same way like i had some speakers but they were plugged into the

the thunderbolt instead of to the uh the mac it was get like what you have though like a thunderbolt dock to do this for you you you you absolutely could and um and even my dell display has it's got a bunch of usb ports it's only usb but it's got a bunch of USB ports and stuff. And that was fine. That worked fine. I hope Apple makes an external display because there is a market for it. I mean, I think I said on Twitter when people were asking about this a few

weeks ago, it seems unlikely to me, because one of the questions is, why would Apple even need to make its own display? If you go back in time, Apple used to make printers. And you know what they did at some point? They said, yeah, we're not going to do that anymore. And at the end, they were taking other people's printers and relabeling them and calling them Apple printers. But they got out of that business. Apple doesn't have to be in every third-party accessory business, right? It doesn't have to be.

So why are they in this one? And the answer is, if you look at the price of that Thunderbolt display, if you're thinking this is a high-end display that's going to sell to all of their Mac Pro and many of their MacBook Pro customers, the margins on it have to be spectacular. Yeah. And they've probably done the majority of the work already in making the iMac. In making the iMac. I assume that's where the technology will come from to produce a 5K, 4K display, something like that. Whether it's a 4K or a 5K, but yeah, a big external retina display using

fancy new technology and maybe an embedded GPU in order to get it all to work right. But yeah, I mean, in the end, I've got to think that the reason Apple would do that is the margins, the fact that you can sell not just... Instead of saying, well, we're going to think that the reason Apple would do that is the margins. The fact that you can sell not just... Instead of saying, well, we're going to sell other people's monitors. It's like, no, when you go to the Apple store and you want to buy a new Mac Pro, it's like, we've also got your fancy retina monitor to buy with it. All right, let's bundle it in. Not everybody will do that, but a lot of people will do that. It's from the same manufacturer. It's a package deal.

The stuff that they include at the Apple Store is always going to sell better than stuff that you have to go find on your own. And they build it in with high margins, which they absolutely will. And it'll be a very profitable product for them. And I think that's why you keep it around, is it's a good experience. I'm sure it will be a very high quality display and it will make them a lot of money and it will increase the average revenue per sale for every Mac that is compatible with it because people will buy it. So I think it's a no brainer. I think it will absolutely happen. Unlike printers, where why would anybody want to, frankly, want to be in the printer business? But this one, I think, is a business Apple wants to stay in.

So if you want to, you can still go to the Apple Store. You can still buy one for the not discounted price of $999. Amazing. Once they're gone, they're gone. Those will be great sale. Once everybody throws them overboard overboard if you're somebody who doesn't care about retina those will be available for cheap and they might actually be really great at that at a cheaper price but might be a great great for a third of the price

i can't envision ever buying a non-retina anything ever again so yeah yeah it's a funny it's just a funny old i just love i love the line i just love the line there are a number of great third parties it's just so what are they what are they gonna say right i know like but they didn't really have to say anything right just we're stopping making it like your supplies last it's just funny i don't know there's something just a reminder we're not the only this isn't the only monitor in the world. But you can't buy any other monitor from them directly.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that interesting? I feel like at least now, just stock something, right? That's Sharp Display or something like that. There are a lot of good displays out there. There really are. I recommend the Dell ones. I've used them and I like them a lot. good displays out there. There really are. I recommend the Dell ones.

I've used them, and I like them a lot. They're really nice. Yeah, I like the Dell display a lot. Although I did have to cover up the Dell logo with a piece of tape. Really? Did you do that? Oh, Jason. I did it for a little while, and then the tape was worse than the Dell logo,

so then I took it off. At least put a sticker on the thing, you know? Come on. That's true. You gotta get a sticker that's the right shape for that. Anyway, yeah. Dude, you're getting a Dell monitor to go with your Mac. Something like that. That was follow-up, huh? That was follow-up.

This week's episode is brought to you by Ministry of Supply. Unfortunately, we do all sweat, and typically this is at times when it's inconvenient for us. If we're at the gym, our gym clothes are made to handle it, but our work clothes tend not to be.

And I remember Jason in the summer months standing on the tube in the morning, going to work, and arriving at work and needing a shower. Like, just the worst, because we used to wear suits to work. There's no way needing a shower, like just the worst, because we used to wear suits to work. There's no way around it. We had to wear suits. And so I would go every morning. If I was smart enough, I would leave my suit jacket on the back of the chair. But most of the time I'd be going to a meeting or something somewhere else. So I'd

need to have it. And there was just no way around it. And I would arrive at work a mess and restricting, stiff, sweaty, not good. this is not the way that you want to arrive to work in the morning and this is where ministry of supply can help you they combine performance technology with tailored design to make men's workwear that's actually comfortable and capable and this result is in dress shirts and slacks that wick sweat breathe and stretch as you move and i was talking about suits they make a suit called the aviator 2 super stretchy super breathable and people have actually run marathons in this suit ministry of supplies co-founder set a guinness world record for the fastest half marathon run in a suit and he was wearing the aviator 2 they put their money where their mouth is not an award

that is not a record of course it is maybe it is okay it's a gu is not a record. Of course it is. Oh, maybe it is. Okay. It's a Guinness World Record. How many... Do they do suit half marathons? Is that a... No, he just did it. I mean, Guinness will do anything, right? So if you say to them, I want to set a record for X,

there may have been somebody else who'd done it before, but the Guinness World Record book, have you ever seen this? It's huge. And there's a bunch of craziness in there. I used to have one when I was a kid. Ministry of Supplies co-founder set a world record for doing it. But irrespective of his speed, he still ran a half marathon in a suit.

In a suit. Amazing. That's what Ministry of Supply can help you do. Go to ministryofsupply.com slash upgrade. You'll get 15% off your first Ministry of Supply purchase by using the code upgrade at checkout. Or if you live in boston san francisco and coming soon washington dc you will have access to a ministry of supply store if you go into one of their stores mention this show you will also get 15 off thank you so much to ministry of supply

for their support of this show and relay fm we should uh we should run a marathon or something yeah you know like we do like we get one suit, two suits, we tie it, like get them stitched together in like some kind of pantomime horse way. And me and you, you know, the upgrade, first annual Upgave marathon. Yeah. For the fastest half marathon run by two people in two suits sewn together.

Who record a podcast together. Yeah. And then the Guinness World Record can, we can get one. Maybe, maybe. All right. You wrote a great piece over at Six Colors in the week past

about your time with macOS Sierra. I believe you are in possession of a extra MacBook which runs Sierra now? Yes, I went down to Apple after the show, in fact, last week and got a briefing about macOS Sierra and got

a MacBook Pro. This is one of those things where it was like, the show in fact last week and got a briefing about mac os sierra and got a macbook pro this is one of those things where it was like just in case they announce something we'll be ready yeah but we think we're okay yeah and it was it was a sierra briefing and i got a macbook pro with sierra pre-installed on it by apple which is nice because i could use that as a reference system instead of installing it on my own iMac, which makes me feel better. It's nice to have that kind of somewhere else. Makes me feel better, too.

And so, yeah. And they did a funny thing where they briefed a bunch of people, and then they had an embargo time. And it's this weird thing where there are still rules about the developer version, and you're not supposed to write reviews of the betas and things like that. And people just don't pay attention to it. But with this, there was some group of us who got the official briefing from Apple and the official blessing to write about, you know, essentially write reviews and take screenshots and all of that publicly about the beta with Apple's blessing. And the post date was like Wednesday morning. That was the embargo time. So I spent, you know, the rest of Monday driving around the Bay Area to various places. And then Tuesday I spent writing my piece about Sierra, which everybody saw on Wednesday morning,

My piece about Sierra, which everybody saw on Wednesday morning, 3000 words of it or something like that. I was, I was, uh, Renee Ritchie wrote more words than I did. Um, although his story was, I? And it runs a gamut from like, you know, what Jim Dalrymple writes and what I write and what Rene writes. And Rene had like 5,000 words that blew me away, but he was, I'm more does things

a little bit differently. He had like lots of stuff. It was like building on a story from the previous week and all that. But I do pay attention to that because I'm kind of curious because I write it

essentially in isolation. And then it's like, what did everybody else do it's like a little experiment it's like we gave the same information to six different people and what did they all do I read for yours this morning it's the only one that I

read naturally well it's all you need to read Mike it's all I need exactly that's why I said naturally what more would I need I've got Jason Snow's coverage and I have a bunch of questions and observations based on what you've written. And I would like to go through some of these with you. And I've broken it down into the way that your little piece was written.

So I want to start with storage optimizations. And I wonder kind of how you feel in general about this. Because, you know, you wrote some good stuff in there, you know, some of the things that are uncomfortable, some of the things you like. And I know that I've recently been caught out with the photo storage optimization on my iOS devices. Yeah.

So I was on a plane back from San Francisco and I look at a picture and it was blurry. And then also last week, I met my grandma for lunch and i was showing her photos of like relay con and stuff and none of them were downloaded to my ipad and i didn't have the cellular plan enabled and there was no wi-fi so these are photos that have been taken like within the last week but for some reason they were not the ones that were downloaded to my device. I have the optimized storage thing turned on, which I didn't know that I did, by the way. I don't know how that got turned on, but it was on. And I don't know how comfortable I am for this to happen with the files on my computer.

Like the photos that I'm trying to show someone can be blurry, but you can't get like a blurry audio file. It's like either there or not there. Like the thumbnails of a photo are somewhat useful. Like I can show them to my nan and she can still see them. They just don't look as good as they should, but she doesn't really notice. But I can't like take a one hour audio file

that I wanted to do some work on that we recorded a month ago, but it was something in the can. And then I go to open it on a plane and it's not there. That's a whole different thing for me. Yeah. And there are ways around it if you are thinking of it. If you're thinking of it, you can say, I'm going to make sure this is downloaded, or I'm going to put this in a place that doesn't do that. Because one of the things that's interesting about the storage optimization is it's tied in with this idea that it's syncing iCloud from your desktop, your documents folder, and the iCloud Drive folder. If your document in Sierra is not in one of those places, nothing of this applies. It doesn't go to iCloud.

It doesn't get selectively removed. It's only the stuff that's being synced to iCloud that can be selectively removed because it knows that it's in iCloud. And you can't turn it on for your whole system. So there's some – because somebody was telling me, like, oh, well, just change your workflow and don't put files on the desktop anymore. I'm like, but that's my workflow. I don't want to change my workflow. That makes sense. You can do that, but it doesn't work for me.

Also, you have to know, right? You have to know. And the thing I was thinking was I was in Yosemite for the Yosemite conference this year and last year. A great conference. If they do it again i recommend that people go it was really great yeah i've had that one on my list it looks it's beautiful um but so i was there and i was doing a presentation and you know i hadn't finished the presentation by the time i got there there was an apple event there was a lot of stuff going on it was a very

busy week uh so i had to i had to finish building the presentation while I was there. And presentations have images and stuff in them. And I had that moment where I realized, like, the internet connection in Yosemite is really bad. It's very slow. And there were computer nerds there, so it was even slower because we were using it all. And I had that same moment of, like, all of these files that I know I have but they're not here and that was not not because of iCloud Drive but it was that feeling of like oh I didn't think about the fact that there's this particular file in Dropbox that I need that I that is in a folder

that I didn't sync to this laptop and that that that is what I was thinking of when I saw this feature, is what if that image or that document that you need when you're in a low connectivity area just got optimized without you knowing it? And you didn't even think about that you would need it. It was an image from eight months ago, but you knew you stored it away and that it was there if you needed it at some point in the future.

And eight months later, you need it and you're not connected to the internet. And that's the problem in the future. And eight months later, you need it and you're not connected to the internet. And that's the problem with the scenario. And I like so many things about this feature in terms of making it be almost like you've got not quite unlimited storage, but that a lot of the storage issues you have are taken care of by iCloud. But I'm not sure it's realistic for Apple to think that this makes sense in a world where one, between two thirds and three quarters of all the Macs are laptops. And two, this is a place where not, you know, not everybody has fast internet everywhere they go. I'm sure that a lot of the people who build tools at Apple and work at Apple

every day are always connected with high-speed internet. But we've seen this in the past, that sometimes I think Apple builds features not understanding the conditions that other people have in terms of their network. And this feels like a great feature for a desktop computer on an always-on, probably non-metered internet connection. This seems like a great feature. On a laptop that's taken on airplanes, many of which don't have in-flight Wi-Fi anyway, this doesn't seem like a great feature. Because, again, it might not bite me.

I'm not saying it would bite me commonly, frequently, but the fact that it might bite me would be enough for me to not turn it on. Just because I would have no confidence. If I could have no confidence that the files that I want are with me. unless I very specifically in advance know exactly what files I want, which I think is not a great scenario. So, you know, again, I think it's a cool feature, but I'm dubious about how frequently people will want to use it because I think there's a lot of pain that will come out of it if people kind of unwittingly turn it on and don't quite realize what they're signing up for. And then they go on vacation with their laptop

and find that the file that they're counting on to do some, you you know to write their novel while they're in a cabin in the woods and the novel file is gone because the funny thing is the i feel feel like the easy argument for uh for this is oh you know people don't use their computers the way that me and you use our computers right like accessing a massive audio file three months later right but the thing is me and you use our computers right like accessing a massive audio file three months later right but the thing is me and you have both got caught out by photo optimization so it's it's kind of like the same thing is like we're not going to use this feature because we don't we don't want to do this we want to run our computers slightly differently. But we also probably both didn't know that we're on storage optimization. I, yeah, I mean, leaving our particular,

sure, our particular ways of using files are probably outside the norm. But like, I have spreadsheets that I look at once every three months. And if I am somewhere where I need to call that spreadsheet up and it's just not there and I don't have an internet connection, that's bad, right? That's bad. So it's just one of those things that it's a, you know, I think it's a clever feature. Apple is putting a lot of stock in the fact that they are intelligently managing storage, that it's files that you're not using frequently that are old, that it's offloading. And I get that.

And yet, I don't know, I'm not convinced that this is going to be something that makes people happy and that it isn't going to just cause more problems where people no longer have this confidence that if they're not on the Internet, they don't have access to all of their stuff when they, when they need it. And there's no interface, right? There's no, you can, the only interface here is that you can download something from iCloud drive. That's not downloaded. You can force a download by clicking. You can, you can get it to download it, but there's no like never, never delete this file interface so far as I can tell. Or never delete anything in this folder. I don't, that's not how it seems to work, at least in beta one. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, there is a real benefit to this that I understand, but I would like to be able

to have more choice. I have heard that Dropbox Infinite will be like that. So you'll be able to choose what you want in and out, which I really like the idea of that. That's the feature that I want. But that's the power user feature and Apple are building the feature for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. And they should. They should. This is the challenge is you're building a feature that just works, that has no interface beyond saying, yes, I want to use this. And that's all great. I just, when I walk through that, the scenarios, I see a lot of scenarios where people end

up really angry at Apple for losing, not permanently, but for making their files unavailable when they need them and there's some place where they don't have an internet connection. And that's not, you don't want to be caught out like that. And that makes people not trust their computer anymore and not trust Apple. And yeah, so we'll see. I mean, maybe it will be spectacular and it will never be a problem for anyone,

but I'm a little concerned that this is more of a problem than that. As well as this, the storage optimizations do come with some features that i can't wait to have like storage management controls so you can choose things as i read like you can have uh itunes automatically delete movies you can have your trash automatically emptied like stuff like that is really great movies movies and tv shows you've already watched yeah and i've had that where i'm like why do i have 10 gigabytes in the in the itunes oh it's that movie that i downloaded and watched,

and then it sat there for another six months. Downloads, if you download the same disk image, because you're like, oh, I need to reinstall that, and it turns out you already did that download, and it's the same file, or it's the older version of the same file, it actually will. There are cases where this could stomp things out,

but it'll download the new one, and it basically replaces the old download of the same name that's the same file and i need to protect that skype disk image that i have of like skype six that thing man that saved me you should put it somewhere special um yeah they they're doing a bunch of stuff like that that is they're reducing uh sierra reduces the number of logs that get generated or it cleans up the logs in a better way which is again, again, I think an example where Apple, when people at Apple had huge hard drives, they didn't really worry about it.

But now that everybody's got SSDs, they're like, oh yeah, those logs are really inefficient. We should do something about that. There's a lot of that going on where they're trying to set your mail settings, the Apple mail settings, to leave some or all of the attachments on the IMAP server for you. Because those attachments take up a lot of disk space.

And it's a different way of doing it than iCloud. It's using IMAP. But it's the same principle, which is, do you need this on your drive if it's accessible on a server for you to get later? And you have two options with mail. You can actually say, leave them all up there or just leave the old ones up there and delete them locally. But all of the things that they're doing

on a bunch of different fronts, on stage, they made it seem like, oh, well, this is one feature. It is one feature, but it's a lot of different techniques to try and either delete stuff that you don't need or that's duplicating something else that's already on the drive

or finding things that are in the cloud and saying it's in the cloud, that's fine. We don't need it on this Mac anymore. One thing that I'm also really excited about is the reduced clutter feature where the system can help you remove files that you don't need. It's a bit of a Sherlocking.

You know, there are a bunch of apps that do this like ClearMyMac and DaisyDisk and stuff like that. But I am pleased that this is being built into the system. And as usual with some of these things that might help those other applications because you feel you want more control and then you go to a third party. Exactly.

But I'm pleased that they're building this in. It will do things like iOS backup disk images, which actually can be enormous. And a lot of times you don't even back up your iOS device anymore. You did it once or you moved it to iCloud. It'll delete those. It'll let you choose to delete. It sort of shows you, look how much space these are taking up,

and you can delete them right from there. Disk images get floated to the top of software you installed a long time ago, and now they're just sort of sitting there and then there are other large files that they'll that they'll point out are there too garage band i think they actually link to garage band directly so that you can remove like instruments and loops and stuff like that because those are huge too and they've really just tried to kind of catalog the biggest culprits in terms of eating disk space with stuff that you probably don't need.

Right. Okay. So yeah, I'm excited about that. That is going to be a good feature. Everybody's going to have SSDs eventually. Even the Fusion drives will eventually go away. And the SSDs, although they are getting bigger and cheaper, because that's the way of the world, it's a step back that makes it painful for people. So this will make it, you know, this will make it easier. I think in the long run, it's not, storage isn't going to matter. In the long run, you'll be able to mirror, you know, SSDs will be so cheap that it won't matter, but it's going to be a while. And so this is a feature for the interim. All right, let's move on to Siri.

No Ahoy telephone or Ahoy computer call can be made. Hello, computer. Hello, computer. Hello, computer. No Ahoy Macintosh. There's none of that in there, which is interesting. I don't know why they didn't put that in there. That seems weird to me. I asked them about it, and

their answer was strange. The answer was like, we don't think that the Mac is in contexts where you're across the room and need to shout at it. That we think the Mac generally you're engaged in it actively. And so and so a keystroke is a better or a click on an icon is a better interaction, which I can see the argument. But I suspect that there's some other story behind this

too, right? That they, for whatever reason, didn't want the Mac monitoring your audio all the time. Looking for it, they were... I wonder if there's a technical reason why. Because it strikes me that I get the philosophical reason, but I'm not entirely sure the philosophical reason is the real reason why. But I get it. They're saying, look, you know, the Siri experience on the Mac is active. You're using your Mac and then you're telling it to do things or asking it questions. And that's why it works the way it does. Also, I think actually it might this might be part of it, too.

There's this advanced dictation feature, which actually lets you kick off like scripts and stuff, which has been there for years, which is pretty awesome, actually. And there are a whole bunch of new interactions that Apple is releasing that let you do some kind of amazing voice control of apps. But it uses a different path than Siri with a different set of triggers. And I think that one has, and it's related to accessibility. And I think that one has voice triggers. So I wonder if there's actually a collision happening here where they kind of can't do one without integrating the other and they don't want to, or they didn't have time to, or something like that. I don't know. So it may be something like that where, because people don't, a lot of people don't know this, but in addition to regular dictation, there's this advanced dictation that is a whole other path. It downloads a bunch of data, and it also lets you control your Mac via voice and do a bunch of stuff and run scripts and things like that. And that's been there for more than a decade.

That's been there for ages, and it's still there. So there may be interaction problems there, too. But anyway, their story is that they feel like this is a feature that is used by people who are actively using their Mac and so there's no Ahoy computer Do you ever think you're going to use these Siri features like seriously? Yeah I suspect I will use it some just like i use it on my on my iphone i don't use siri heavily anywhere right now yeah but um there are those moments where i think again like i will

i will have that moment of like are the giants playing today you know i do that a lot are they playing today what's the score now all i do that, or what's the weather forecast. And some of that stuff's in notification center and I can get it there. But for like giant stuff, I end up launching a web browser and going to a page and seeing what the schedule is. And for stuff like that, I'm like, Oh yeah, I can just use Siri for that. Now that'll be easier. I can see, I can see some of that. Um, I'm not sure I'm going to use it to do searches, especially since those same searches can be done on the computer by typing and probably with more features than can be done with Siri on the Mac. I think it will be somewhat useful, but I'm withholding judgment about whether I want to use it for a little while and see if it's something that sticks with me. My gut feeling is that I won't use it a lot. Let's talk about photos.

You are the king of photos, after all. You wrote the book on photos. What has your experience been so far with image recognition from faces and horses and mountains that kind of thing do you feel like it's doing a good job a different job or whatever like how how do you feel about this um it's early it's a beta. I think the image recognition stuff is really cool. It seems to work. One of the challenges is setting this up on a new Mac. My photo library is huge.

And it's an iCloud. And so I've set it to optimize storage because, quite frankly, my photo library won't fit on this Mac's hard drive. So it's got to optimize storage. And there's this question of like, okay, is it going to still analyze these photos even with optimized storage turned on? And it seems to have analyzed the last couple of years worth, but not a lot more than that, which I'm not quite sure why that's happening. And is it going to, if I leave it open on my desk for a couple of days, will it optimize, will it load the thumbnails and start analyzing all the pictures in my library or not? It does find mountains and cats

and dogs and lakes and things like that and rainbows, but not unicorns because the unicorns aren't real. And it's... What happens to Google? Let me see.

Google will show you pictures of products that haven't been released yet. So it does work, but I'm withholding judgment again because I don't know if it's really indexing everything. I mean, and it's a beta. It's encouraging the facial recognition stuff. Again, it's a beta. I think it's not all there yet. I hope it's not all there yet because it does a much worse job of recognizing faces at this point

than the old faces engine in that it recognized like 40 photos of faces and then everything else is sort of like one face, one face, one face, one face. Like it isn't rolling things together and I'm not quite sure what's going on there. I'm going to, again, it's a beta. It's early.

I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. But what I can't say is, oh yeah, it's already better, because I don't think that's the case. I think there's more work to be done. I suspect it has to do with the analysis and how often it's doing the analysis and how it's pulling data down from iCloud and all of that. So we'll see. It's just, I think it's too early yet. I'm encouraged, iCloud and all of that. So we'll see. I think it's too early yet. I'm encouraged, but it's too early. Google didn't turn any results for unicorns. Maybe it will for some people, but maybe I just don't have any pictures of unicorns. Maybe that's the problem. Have you played around with the memories features at all? Did you see anything here that kind of made you smile?

Because Google does this, right? So they have their assistant stuff. They create albums. They create GIFs. And they usually surface something that I find kind of fun. It makes me, you know, just puts a smile on my face. Have you seen any of the movies or slideshows? Have any of it kind of elicited that kind of response from you?

Sure. There are no movies on the Mac. That's only on iOS. But there are memories. And I like the idea because it's like TimeHop or one of those services, right? Where it's like, this is something that you did a year ago. It's such a simple and easy thing to do, right? Like just you have all of the data. Just show me stuff that's dated one year ago. Well, in fact, I would say last week when I set this up, one of the memories that it gave me was, and this is in my review, was you took the kids to the beach four years ago this week.

And there were a bunch of pictures and a video of this trip we took to the beach. And that was a lot of fun. And it's like, and here's what you did three years ago. And here are some photos from last month. And you kind of collected a bunch of things together in these different memories. And I thought that was good because we talked about this on Clockwise a little bit last week that, you know, we have so many images and videos in our libraries now. And it very rarely do you go, I'm just, you know, I'm just going to paw through my library and see what happened in the past. We really need the software to surface stuff and say, you might want to look

at this because otherwise this stuff's never going to get looked at again. We take all these images, we generate all this data, and then we don't do anything with it. So it worked with me. I really enjoyed those beach photos enough that it was looking like a very warm weather week here last week. And so that memory was actually a spur for me to suggest to my family that we go back to that beach again, which we did on Saturday. So that was actually kind of a fun example of memories in action. I'm like, oh, yeah, we had a good time at that beach. We should go back there. And so we did.

So, yeah, I think memories is clever. It doesn't do all the things that Google Photos does, like creating animations and things like of out of different stacks of photos um although those are of widely varying quality but uh apple's got live photos going for it so it can do some other things there we'll see i would like it i would i would really like to see it kind of do some of that kind of stuff you know the videos that they showed on stage with the funny music and all that kind of stuff like i like that i don't know how much i'll use it but if it's created for me i'll at least watch some of them you know like i don't make those things but if they're made automatically i i quite like to watch them sure sure and and uh that that it will be interesting to watch on ios but not a not a mac feature alas now that you spent some time with sierra do you

think that some of the continuity features like um unlocking with the watch, which is kind of a false Touch ID, right? Like, you know, it's the idea of unlocking it quickly without entering the password. And the watch is what's providing the kind of the Touch ID there, if you'd call it that. Right. And the inclusion of Apple Pay via Touch ID on another device. Do you think that these things are signaling Touch ID on the Mac? I look at it and say it's a foregone conclusion that they're putting it on there. I think it's possible. I mean, the watch is funny because the watch is not really Touch ID at all, the watch is you're entering a passcode, but because the watch is strapped to your wrist and it can monitor whether you've ever taken it off your wrist. The idea

there is once you show one time that you know the passcode and the watch stays on your wrist, you've provided continuity. You are the person who entered that passcode three hours ago, five hours ago. And that's a, that's a cool feature, but it still comes down to your, your Apple watch passcode. That's verifying your identity there. Um, and then with, uh, with the, so, so, and, and that's how you unlock is with the watch. It's not even with the phone there. Apple pay. Yeah. You, you, you're using Apple pay. Basically you're doing a thumbprint on an iPhone or you're doing a, a double tap on the watch. So that's a little bit different.

I don't know. I think they could totally put Touch ID in and you would see its value here. I'm not sure I say 100% sure that this actually means they're going to put Touch ID on Macs, but they certainly could and they would have some features. Because that was always one of our questions, right? It's like, well, what are they really going to do with it and now it's like well very clearly that logging in and apple pay are two things that they could do right out of the box if they uh if they built it in so i don't know i go i i go um both ways on this i i have to say because it could just be a great

feature that encourages you to it's the benefits of having an apple watch it's the benefits of having an iphone um or you know or or you could go the other way which is here it is um your mac can do it itself now with this fancy new reader that we put on it yeah i think i think it's it calls it um one thing that i liked i picked this out from your review you said which i had no idea about this, that web developers will be able to, if they want to, code their sites in such a way that the Apple Pay button only displays when an eligible Touch ID device is in proximity of a Mac. That's awesome. That's what they said. Well, I mean, it's continuity, right?

Like just how continuity will pop up a little thing in the dock or something when you're nearby. This is one of those ideas that you can code it. Whether anybody will do this, I don't know. But the idea that you can code it so it's doing a call that basically Safari is saying, are there any devices? And then it displays it if there are, and it doesn't if there aren't, which would be one way for people who for, you know, if you're a, my guess is that everybody's going to want to have an apple pay button there because they're going to want to impress people that they take apple pay um but uh you could argue the other way which is this eliminates kind of clutter and it's like apple don't show apple pay unless people are actually capable of paying with it yeah um i

want there's also just a couple little extra parts that i wanted to go through kind of did like a little features at the end um and i want to see if you can clarify something so apple are introducing a tabs like view um to the os and i wasn't completely clear on this from the presentation is it just you get to have tabbed windows within a specific application or you can assign windows to tabs and what i mean by this is like will numbers give me tabs or will i be able to combine pages and numbers into one tab window now it's it's per app and it's basically a a cheap way an easy way for any app that uses the the standard window frameworks to to support multi-tab like in safari or something like that and i mean literally it's a setting so some apps would have to be modified in order to support this and some apps won't work with it at

all but have built their own multi like photoshop won't work with this, but it doesn't matter. They've got their own multi tab approach. Um, but a lot of sort of standard apps, you turn this feature on and they just, they get it and they work like Safari. They will add new documents to tabs and you can drag them out and the whole drag them around and the whole thing. And it's just, it's built into the framework now that, and then you can choose, you can choose full, uh, full screen only or everywhere or or nowhere basically picture in picture is also coming to the mac for video and on the ipad it's only you're only allowed to view these videos in the corners i was happy to discover that um you can uh if you call, I tried all the keyboard shortcuts to see about this. And yeah, if you hold down the command key while you drag the picture in picture video window

around, you can put it anywhere. Any old where you want, which I thought was great because I don't always want my video right up in the corner. I've got a giant 5K iMac here. It's huge. I don't actually want things way up in the corner like that. And no, you can put it anywhere with the command key held down. And have you had any time to play around with notes collaboration? Not really. I mean, for like five minutes. And it seems to work. I mean, that's sort of my review is it does seem to work. You can invite people via iCloud and they can see your note and they can put things in the notes and you see them kind of appear. And yeah, it seems to work.

And across iOS and Mac. So it's not immediate, but it's in a kind of way like how it works currently. Like if I add something to a note on my iPhone and then open that note on my Mac and start typing things in, eventually like it just spits a bunch of text into there, which I actually quite like the way that it does that syncing. It just doesn't believe in conflicts.

It just throws everything in. So I assume it's kind of the same. So things can move around and be pushed in, but it's not like you can't see me live typing in there like in Google Docs or something. I don't think it's quite that of a refresh but i think it's trying to be it's trying to be as fast as it can but it's not a you know i can see every word every letter as you're typing it like it is in something like google docs um and there's one thing that i've seen people talking

about now you can change the default font size in notes which is amazing news notes uh has really grown up uh notes has a lot of things going for it now that it didn't it doesn't have before um i believe one of the great things about notes now is it has a preferences window for the first time yay what is in there what is what's in there that well a bunch of stuff that used to be just being a menu item is in the notes preferences window. But still, it's like when an app, when an app grows up and becomes an adult, it gets a preferences window. And so in the preferences window of notes, there is a sort notes by, new notes start with, default account, whether you want an on my Mac account or not and a default text size and then also you can set the password for and reset the password for locked notes huh that's and i think

those were largely settings that already existed except the default font size except the default fonts that they existed but they were like in the notes application menu just as items. Yeah. And somebody seems to have said, all right, we got too much junk in there. Let's just make a preferences window. So congratulations to notes for finally Mazel Tov notes.

You are now, it's like, you know, it's like a bar mitzvah or something. You are now a man. Yes. Congratulations notes or woman. I actually don't know the gender of notes, you are now an adult a legal adult you have a preferences box so overall what do you how do you feel about sierra oh something i didn't ask you how many times did

you call it mac os 10 sierra when you were writing this uh none i was super good about it and then when i posted the review i tweeted about it and immediately called it Mac OS X Sierra in the tweet. Yep. The pressure was off then. And that was when it got me. Yeah. But how do you feel about it overall? You know, it's a nice update. I need to see the photos changes could actually be really spectacularly good. But I got to see him in action and I'm not all the way there yet. I remains to be seen a lot of nice things, not not a lot of huge overhauls, which I think is good. Integrating iCloud Drive more is, I think, a good thing for Apple to do.

But like I said, I'm a little unsure about the optimized storage feature for your documents. But it may turn out to be good. But I think so many people do keep all their stuff in documents and desktop. And if you've got multiple Macs, this is a really good way. I mean, you can use Dropbox and have all your files stored in Dropbox, but if you put things that aren't in Dropbox, they don't, they don't sync at all. This is like for, for people who don't want to go down that path. You know, if you turn this on and you've got a couple different Macs, they're just going to be in sync. The stuff on the desktop is the stuff on the

desktop everywhere. That's pretty cool. That's a, that's a nice base system level feature for Apple to do. Yes, it does mean that they're going to be able to charge more people for iCloud Drive. I do wonder if they might change the iCloud Drive prices again in the fall, since they're trying to get people to use this. And the iCloud Drive prices are okay. They're better than they used to be. But I do wonder if they might try to be a little more aggressive with pricing just to get people on board. Because if you check that box, and it says, you know, you don't have enough to use this feature, this nice new feature, because you have to pay us. I'm not sure that's, you know, how many, what percentage of users does

Apple want to throw that dialog box up to and prompt them to immediately pay? And, you know, is that an upsell for them? is that a bad user experience and they want want you to get on this feature and then pay for more space down the road when it you know your data expands and grows i don't know um but uh but yeah i think so so yeah i'm optimistic about this about this release i'm looking forward to using some of the features that i haven't gotten a chance to use yet, like the watch unlock thing, and see how that feels too. I guess it's because you're not running OS 3 on the watch yet, right? Right.

Well, my understanding is the Beta 1 doesn't even have the watch unlock feature in it, but I'm not running watch OS 3 on my watch anyway, so I can't really test it regardless. All right. This next episode is also brought to you by FreshBooks, the company on a mission to help small business owners save time and avoid the stress that comes with running businesses. And FreshBooks has created a super intuitive tool

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tons of third-party integrations and just so much more as a listener of this show if you go to freshbooks.com upgrade you can get a 30-day free trial with no credit card required and when you do sign up for fresh books because i know that you're going to love it just like i do enter the code upgrade in the how you heard about the section fresh books will then know that you came to them from this show and it will help the wheel of support keep on turning thank you so much to fresh books for their support of upgrade and relay fm jM. Jason Snell, it is time. It is time for me and you to discuss a topic that we have had banding around for months now, but I have been resisting because I know how it makes you feel, and I wanted to hold it back until the

time was right. I feel like the time is now right. We are going to discuss the potential for Apple to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from the next iPhone. The reason we're going to talk about this now is prompted by more supply chain rumors and case manufacturers, etc. Nilay Patel of The Verge wrote a pretty good article, I think. It was a nice little listicle, which I thought was quite funny. It was a good way i think it was a nice little listicle which i thought was quite funny it was a good way to do it um in the reasons that he believes the removal of the headphone jack is a bad idea now i'm going to take the casey list role here summarizer in chief and go through some of the parts here and then subsequent articles and then i will release you all right to to talk about how you feel yeah so nilai patel he cited a lot of great reasons um as to why removing the headphone jack is a bad idea and some of my favorites were drm audio so you know don't now basically all of the music

that you listen to there'll be some kind of drm check for it because that's what happens so digital it's like this you know if you've ever seen what what is it, HDCP error or something when you're trying to play back video, it's because there's some kind of digital video DRM check that came with the HDMI standard. This is a similar type of thing that could happen with something like lightning as the way to pass digital audio rather than using the analog kind of loophole that's in the 3.5 millimeter jack. We're going to have to see more dongles and adapters because if you want,

I can pretty much guarantee that if they move it over to lightning port, there will be a lightning to 3.5 millimeter dongle, which will suck because who wants to use stuff like that? And one that I actually think is pretty important, but has been uh i think misunderstood by some people who don't understand why this is a thing making android and iphone

headphones incompatible um and i think i don't think nilai wrote this point very well but he didn't actually explain this one and if i can infer from him what he's saying is that if you want to buy a pair of headphones you have to check what adapter it has now yeah which you've never had to do before but now you like you oh i want to buy those headphones you take them home and you realize that they're lightning but you have an android phone or vice versa right like you buy them and it's like oh these have got that little connector that i know but oh no wait it's usb you know, and so the wheel goes around and around. This is something we've never had to worry about before. Every device has Bluetooth, every

device has a 3.5 millimeter jack, you can use the headphones you just bought. That won't be the case anymore. After Nili posted this, John Gruber kind of rebuts all of it, he has his own opinions, he breaks down Nili's piece, and there are a lot of things that he goes into, but I want to pick out a couple of things here from John's piece. He believes it's not about the thinness. This is something that people have said for a long time, the idea of Apple will remove this because it's the biggest port on the iPhone, blah, blah, blah. However, as John very rightly points out, the iPod Touch and the iPod Nano both are thinner than the current iPhone and still include the headphone jack. So thinness doesn't really seem to make sense as an argument here. But then John kind of starts to go against some of what Neelya is saying,

and he compares ditching of the headphone jack to like when Apple ditched the floppy drive on the iMac, which we spoke about with Stephen a couple of weeks ago. And saying that Apple has a history of this, they move first, you know, they're always adding, like they added USB, they removed floppy drive, they do these types of things. They cut stuff out and move on. Like, you know, we had these same arguments when they cut all the ports from the MacBook and they just put USB-C on it. It's like, this is the way it goes. This is how Apple work. And John brings in an argument of, oh, we'd still have VGA on our devices. He also says that Apple don't care about port compatibility. They've never have. They just care about compatibility with their own devices. This is just what they do. That was a kind of,

I think, effectively what Gruber is saying. His kind of argument is, I don't know why they're doing it. I don't know if it's going to be good or bad. I'm sure they have a reason. Who knows what that reason is going to be? Maybe it's fine, but this is just what Apple does. I want to throw one more thing in here, Jason, which is MFI certification. I've seen a couple of people mention this,

but this is the idea. MFI is made for iPhone, by the way, in case you don't know that a lot of people say mfi but it means made for iphone it is apple certification of products that use the lightning connector they need to have a chip in them which apple allows and then they say yes rubber stamp you can make this product in the world where we have no headphone jack anymore, all wired headphones will need to be MFI certified because they will run through lightning, most likely. Well, all wired headphones that don't just use an adapter. Yeah, if they're lightning headphones,

they will need to be MFI certified. Sure. So if you want to, that's a good clarification, thank you. So if you want to plug it directly in there without some kind of crazy or ugly adapter, you will need to be certified by Apple. This is going to cause delays in products being launched. This will actually make, I think, a lot of people stop wanting to make headphones, right? They just won't make them because why would you

go through this? They'll just say, well, you need to get an adapter. This is on you. But I'm sure this will be easy for Beats, right? Beats is part of Apple. They will have lightning headphones. And I'm sure this is another reason why Apple bought them because when they I'm sure made this decision I think probably made this decision before they bought Beats it's probably one of the reasons that they did it because they will be able to make this change whenever they do make this change and have products in the market immediately that are not just Apple's products because I don't think people I don't think the general public who buy Beats products know that Apple owns them. I just don't think that that is a thing.

It's because Apple have never done anything publicly, like outwardly, to do this, right? They just featured them in product shots, but it's not like Beats by Apple. They didn't change any of that. So I think this is maybe one of the reasons why Apple bought Beats, is it gives them the ability, when they do finally make this move to push in to it um steve strezer also wrote a really great piece that breaks down a lot of john gruber's arguments as well that i just saw you put into the document jason uh-huh yeah it's just it's another it's another good piece uh about this where uh he he so there's neela and then there's gruber's piece and then steve streza wrote a really nice critique of gruber's piece that gruber linked to full credit to gruber uh he he definitely

uh you know wanted to cover the bases here and get some other views in so and there is an episode of the talk show where marco has uh come with an outline i have like just got to that part yeah so i haven't heard it yet no so maybe we can do some follow up on it based on there because i fully expect uh marco to have the opinion that you're probably about to have yep so i would be interested in hearing the conversation that uh marco and john have but i unfortunately have not finished that part yet so i will not be able to uh to point that out so yeah there must be a reason right this is something that many people are holding on to jason it's like there must be a reason apple has a reason they have always had reasons so so first first thing i want to i want

to point to a piece that michael gartenberg wrote on i more this morning that is hilarious because it's just we don't know jack about the next ip. And this is a point that I think I made when we touched on this subject a few months ago, which is, it's a rumor. It's not real. And I'm unclear how much energy I want to put into arguing about a rumor. And ultimately, Gruber, I disagree with a lot of the arguments Gruber made. Um, I'm, I, and I agreed with a lot of the arguments that Neal made and that Steve Strayson made. Um, what I would say is Gruber makes one very good point, which is we don't actually know any of the details. There's just a rumor that there's no headphone jack. That's it. We don't know Apple's reasons why. We don't know any benefits that Apple might cite.

So we all have to project our own feelings. We bring our own biases. We imagine the scenario because the scenario doesn't exist yet. and that is a challenge because we can't hear we don't know the whole picture so we have to make some guesses um and and i'm always reluctant to spend too much time on things that are not actually real but this happens a lot though right like we get a rumor we don't have the full picture but there's still credit to the argument and eventually said thing happens it doesn't always work this way but it does work this way and it's not like we don't talk about things that are rumored we talked about like that the rumored touchscreen oled thing on the macbook pro a little bit but you always have to step carefully because you you you have to call out when you're making assumptions about it. Like we don't, we don't know what the rumored

OLED touchscreen thing is and how it will be used. And until you hear the whole story, you can make some assumptions about it, but those could be right or wrong because you're, you're, you're putting your own guesses in there. So I think it's worth pointing out. This is a thing that is a rumor and we don't know the details or if it will actually happen. Yeah. That all said, yeah, you know, I don't know, Mike. The problem is that what I agree with, with Nealey is in absence of a good explanation of why now is the time and why this makes the iPhone seven, presumably if that's what it's called, a better product. And I haven't heard Apple's arguments. And quite frankly, although John's piece is carefully constructed, I feel like John fails to make any good arguments about why. His arguments tend to be, and in fact,

he says, I didn't even argue that the change would be good for users. I just argued that it could, but we don't know yet. It also might be stupid and user hostile. Because this is the thing. There is no reason now that we have that this could be good. There is none. There is zero reason. And let me be blunt here. A lot of the Apple fans who I have seen give arguments for why this is good, I think their arguments are not good enough. Like, why would you buy a new iPhone that takes away the headphone jack and doesn't offer you any particularly tangible benefits? Why would that be a user? And I hear things like, well, it's getting things out of the way now so that when they have to have one, because they're going to have an edge to edge screen version of the iPhone

in 2017, it's like, really? So Apple's whole strategy here is we're giving you less so you'll get used to it. And that's how they're going to sell new iPhones in the fall. That doesn't seem like a good argument to me. Because this is one of those things where that could well be the reason, right? Like, OK, let's just say that like one of it's not it's not it's not a thickness issue or whatever, but it's an issue of. You don't bring the pain without the benefit. You don't bring the pain without the benefit. Save it for the year where you have this amazing edge-to-edge screen OLED 10th anniversary iPhone and that you can't put a headphone jack in.

That's when you take the headphone jack out because you say, look, I know you don't get the headphone jack now, but see why? See this amazing thing you get? Here are all the benefits you get from us taking it out. You don't take it out a year before and say, yeah, this year's phone kind of sucks, but hey, next year's phone will be great. Because that's malpractice on Apple's part if they did that. Sure. I mean, but I can kind of see the view that would be taken behind closed doors of that, which is if we do this now, it stops next year, the air being sucked out of

the room. I fear for Apple if their strategy is make bad products now so that people won't complain as much later but what i'm saying is like this could be a business decision behind closed doors but that's not the reason they give but this could be part of why they do it now there might be a benefit they tell you that you're going to get but the reason they do it this year is before the big one next year because they don't want the headlines to be Apple removes headphones. So, but I'm saying it might be like, and I don't think that Apple is above this type of thing because they're a

company. Like there are people, this is just how decisions are made that they might decide to make the bad decision now, but there might be, as I say, there might be tangible benefits. There will be reasons that they say they're doing this.

They're not going to say on stage, we're removing this now because next year's phone's going to be even better but it might be a business decision to do it in this design rather than the next design what i'm saying is if it's a business decision and there's no no good reason why and it's just for that they may come up with some things that are little fig fig leaves that they can put over and say oh no no no this is better because as i sit here trying to think what those stories are that they could tell i have a hard time coming up with one that's a legitimate story well yeah i have not i haven't got right but i'm saying this might be what they're doing oh well digital is better but like sound is analog so digital isn't better at some point you have to convert from digital to analog

you can move it to an external digital analog converter that will probably be worse than the one that's in the iPhone. And in the end, because I've heard that argument, like, oh, well, digital is better. It's like, yeah, except sound is analog. It doesn't matter. It literally, that is not an argument. Or I get, it's a 100-year-old plug, so it's time for it to go. It's like, okay.

Or Gruber's argument is, do you think that we're going to have headphone jacks forever? It's like, well, no, we're not going to have it. But again, we're all going to die, right? So I guess we should just give up now. It's like, no, to everything there is a time. Tell me why now is the time. Give me a good reason why now is the time. And if the answer is, well, why not?

That's not a good enough reason. What's the benefit we get? Bluetooth isn't good enough, as Gruber has said himself, right? Next year is always the year that Bluetooth is going to be great. And Bluetooth, I have Bluetooth headphones. I have a Bluetooth receiver in my car. They are problematic. They're better than they were, but I still have weird audio hiccups and I still have issues and they still have to be charged. So wireless, and I talked to people on Twitter about this and they seem to miss the point of like, this is, you know, they're like, no, they can be completely wireless. Well, they have to charge. They have to charge. So there will always be wires involved, right? But, and the headphone jack, there's the compatibility issue. Again, what you're

saying is the iPhone now is not compatible with all the headphones that are out there unless you buy a dongle well again you could do that and everybody could buy a dongle but having lived through the original iphone where you had to buy a dumb adapter just to get a lot of non-standard headphones to fit having had a palm treo where if i wanted to listen to music i had to buy a little adapter because they use the weird like super mini micro, like two and a half millimeter jack instead of the standard jack. So that was terrible. That was an awful experience too. I just think, you know, and the fact that this is not about, this is not a computer

accessory. It's not a phone accessory. It's sort of a worldwide device accessory. It's in speakers and it's in, you know, it's in AV equipment that have been installed and are going to be there for years. It's sort of everywhere. This headphone jack is everywhere because it's lived so long. And again, could, you know, should it live forever? Well, no, but when they got rid of the floppy drive, one of the reasons that Apple could get rid of the floppy drive in the iMac is because it was so clearly outmoded that people were already moving to other media. And you saw even when they asked Steve Jobs about it, he said, look, people aren't going to back up to this thing.

They're going to buy a zip drive. And we're not going to stick a zip drive in here because it would drive up the price. People will just buy an external drive if they want to do that. And people were. Everybody had zip drives. The floppy was irrelevant at that point. The floppy was most commonly used, honestly, by PC users because you had to have a boot floppy at one point. So I think it's a bad analog to say something like, you know, this is like the floppy because again, the floppy died when it was very clear that consumers already had desperately sought out something that was better. And that comes back to my point, which is tell me why this is better. Tell me why all of the incompatibility and pain we're going to go through

of all of the other devices that have these jacks that will now not work with our iPhones at all, or at least without a special dongle that we buy from Apple for $19 or $29. Tell me why that pain is worth it. And I've been thinking a lot about this, and I can't come up with a good answer. I can imagine what Apple will say, but I don't think what I imagine is not good enough to do this. And just saying it's inevitable someday, so why not now? It's just not a good enough reason to motivate people to buy a new product that makes things less compatible.

The benefits of lightning over the dock connector were many, including the fact that it was dramatically smaller and you could plug it in either direction and it was easier to insert. There's so many reasons why it was better and Apple could do more with it. And that was painful, but it was time.

Exactly right. And it was time and there was a benefit. And that was something that Apple controlled. So it was only on Apple devices. And you were replacing an Apple proprietary with another Apple proprietary, where here you're replacing a global century long standard that still works pretty damn well for everybody with what a proprietary thing. I mean, it's not, it's just, it's not the same to go from proprietary to proprietary or to go from standard to completely proprietary. Uh, so yeah, I, so, so again, if Apple wants to make a case, I want to hear what the case is because maybe they can make a really good case. I want to hear what the case is because maybe they can make a really good case.

I've yet to see any argument that makes it good enough for me to say, oh, I see why that's worth the trade-off. I just haven't seen it. Is wireless inevitable? Is Bluetooth or Bluetooth successor inevitable in terms of headphones? Probably, although wired headphones are probably still going to be around for quite a while. But why now? And why not now is not a good enough answer. Give me a benefit.

March of progress, great. March of progress means we progress. March of progress isn't just about ripping things away. It's about ripping things away because there are new things that are better, that are worth the pain of going through the progress. Change for change's sake is not enough. You need to change to improve. And yeah, sometimes that means two steps forward

and one step back. You have to rip the bandaid off. I get it. But it is up to the change agent to make the case about why it's good that we leave this in the dust. And I have yet to hear a good argument for that. And I do think that a theoretical brilliant iPhone that's edge to edge and gets rid of the home button and has its all screen.

And because it's all screen, there's no way that a traditional headphone jack would work. I'd be like, OK, OK, Apple, I see. I see why your awesome design decisions make this a necessity for you. I see why your awesome design decisions make this a necessity for you. I see it. But if it's literally the same phone we have now, it's, you know, there are thinner Apple devices that have a headphone jack. So that's not it. What is the reason?

You know, again, I just, I'm having a hard time seeing it. I hope Apple can do, if this is real, I hope Apple can do a better job of coming up with reasons why it's a good idea than the people who follow Apple on the internet have come up with so far. I'll tell you what concerns me. The reasons that they gave for why the MacBook has the port that it has. Because the reasons that they gave were like, Bluetooth's great, so is wireless. Yeah.

And we're moving things forward. It's time to move forward like that that were basically the reasons that they gave right it was like because they didn't say like we took these ports away to make this thing thinner right that was like and it now is thinner and the ports are gone right but that's what concerns me they also moved from a non-standard apple invented technology in magsafe to a standard with usbc right this is the opposite direction but like i'm just trying to think like what are the what are the parallels and i guess the the most recent thing that would have happened was the removal of all ports except for the the headphone jack, funnily enough, on the MacBook.

So I'm just trying to think, how could they say this? And I thought, oh, well, they basically just said, like, Bluetooth's great. Wireless is great, right? Like, even though, I mean, not really for everything. Let's be honest about this. There's one other potential reason that I've seen floating around, which is better internal speakers. So imagine a world where, let's just say this for a moment, and then we'll say, well, this

is likely impossible, that we have these amazing speakers on the iPads Pro right now. And boy, do I love those speakers. And I would love that quality of speaker in my iPhone, because I use the speakers on my iPhone all the time at home. But I don't want this at the expense of a headphone jack. I just don't want that. Right. Like the great speakers are great. The current speaker is fine.

I don't then want to have to have lightning headphones because I've got the good speakers because I can just use my iPad if I'm at home, which is where I use the speakers anyway. because I can just use my iPad if I'm at home, which is where I use the speakers anyway. But the other thing is to make these really good, they need to do to the iPhone what they did to the iPad, which is to make a ton of space inside. And that was at the expense, not the expense, but that was that instead of putting a lot more battery in it,

making the thing heavier, but that's what they could have done, but they didn't do that. They made the speakers instead. I don't see how just removing the headphone jack would give them enough space because it's not a lot of space it's it's very small nor nor do i say i've seen the argument that it's um that it will help with waterproofing but there are waterproof android phones that have headphone jacks so that's not it um again you gotta want to remove it and uh and again tell me why. But I haven't seen any good arguments. And that's, I think that's the bottom line in the chat room, we just had a little back and forth. It's like, somebody in the chat room said, look, Apple's betting on the future. That's what they

do. And my my take on that is no, Apple doesn't sell future futures, they sell products, and they make good products that people want to buy. And Apple is often very opinionated about what they have to take out of products, because they're holding Apple back from making a better product for the future. And that sometimes that's exciting because Apple is ahead of the curve a little bit, but their product is so great that, again, you get the benefit of using it. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't have a floppy, but you totally want an iMac. The danger is if you get too far ahead, that people will reject it because it's like, why would I want this G4 Cube or whatever, right? Why do I want this? It's like G4 Cube was a really cool product, but it was too much, too fast, too far ahead, and it was just not, and there

were other issues too, right? But Apple is a product company. They make products that people buy. The iPhone of all products is one of the most important consumer products in the world. It is by far the most important product to Apple. Apple's design goal should always be make a product people want. And if Apple does go forward with this, it will be interesting to see, does Apple's opinionated design style apply to a product with the broad appeal of an iPhone? Does it apply? Or is that pushing it too far?

Can Apple push it on Macs, but not necessarily push it quite as far on the iPhone? I don't know. I don't know. But I feel like, yeah, Apple's whole story is about being not beholden to the past and looking toward the future. But at the same time, they do need to sell products to consumers. It needs to be a product people want. If you have a product that is incompatible with everything, but really awesome, that's going to turn off a

lot of people. So again, I'm not saying there's no circumstance under which I would want an iPhone without a headphone jack. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is, and again, this comes back to our biases and our guesses about a product that, as Michael Gartenberg said, does not exist. It is a unicorn. We'll see what the real product is and what the real story is. But if I were to say, imagine an iPhone 7 or a 6 double SP whatever, I don't know, Let's say iPhone 7. If I imagine that, and it's essentially today's iPhone with a better camera and a faster processor and no headphone jack, would I, as an iPhone buyer, want that product with that tradeoff? And again, that's probably not that simple.

It's probably going to have a lot more that makes it appeal. But if it was that simple, would I trade a headphone jack for a faster iPhone sort of on the scale of the last iPhone update and maybe a better camera? For me, the answer is no, it's not enough. So I am open to the possibility of a reason for me to trade my headphone jack for something else but i would like to hear what that is and i haven't i haven't heard it yet from anyone because there isn't a logical reason i think that's and that's that's my fear i want to give apple a lot of credit here i would be shocked if apple did something like this um without a story that made sense and it would actually make me really disappointed in them if they did that. Like if they,

if they made, like you said, that business decision for some reason to do this thing without, uh, as clear a consumer benefit as there should be. Um, but I'm going to give that Apple the benefit of the doubt. Apple tends,

tends not to make bad decisions like that. They tend to make very smart, good decisions. So we'll see. We'll see if it's even real. Again, unicorns, if it's even real. There are no unicorns in my photo library either, Mike, because there aren't any unicorns. Jason, would you like to talk about MailRoute so we can use AskUpgrade? I would like nothing better. You take a knee, take some breaths, get ready for AskUpgrade, and I'll tell you about MailRoute. MailRoute is our sponsor again.

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spam and viruses, puts that in a holding bin, and then only the good mail connects to your server, which means that your server doesn't have bad stuff on it, nor does it have the load that it used to have when it's being endlessly pinged from a spam bot that's trying to send spam to every single address at your server. Instead, all of that junk happens to MailRoute. MailRoute takes the hit for you, and the mail that comes to you is just the good stuff. They've been working on email protections since 1997, MailRoute's team has. They are using an incredibly easy to use web interface. It's got plenty of admin tools. It's got an API. It's designed to make your life spam free. And for users, it's great to make a couple of clicks to deliver mail that was in the spam filter that you actually

want and whitelist the sender so they never get caught in the spam trap again. That happens to me occasionally. Generally, what it does is just filter out the spam. I can always go back with some easy web interfaces if I want to see if something got filtered away. They support LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, Outbound Relay, mailbagging. Mailbagging. Mailbagging. Everything you'd want from the people handling your mail. And there's price matching for McAfee and MXLogic customers right now. So stop spam today with MailRoute. You get a free 30-day trial by going to mailroute.net slash upgrade. Listeners of the show will get 10% off, not for 30 days, not for 90 days, not for a year, for the lifetime of your account, 10% off of MailRoute by going to mailroute.net slash upgrade,

or sending an email to sales at mailroute.net. MailRoute is all about protecting your email from spam and viruses. That's it. That's's what they do they've been doing it longer than anyone else and they do it better than everyone else mail route.net slash upgrade thanks mail route thank you mail route all right so our first question this week comes from will will asks do you think the sos feature in watch os3 lends credence to the rumors of a cell radio in the next Apple Watch? So this was the idea that if there is an issue, you can bring up the SOS and it will help call someone. When they were showing that on stage, I was like, huh, that's interesting. And it says it's just going to go for your phone.

But it would make an awful lot of sense if there was a cell radio in the next watch for a feature like this to exist. Yeah, I think I wrote a thing on Macworld about this, and I kind of believe it's inevitable. Whether it's in the next one or not, I think depends on how small can they get that cell radio, what's the connection story, and what does it mean for battery life. But yeah, some Android Wear watches have it,

and it would, the more standalone the apps get, which they're getting in watchOS 3, and things like the SOS feature, sure. I think there's so many reasons why it would, the more standalone the apps get, which they're getting on watchOS 3 and things like the SOS feature, sure. I think there's so many reasons why it would be good. I did write a whole article about it. I think it's inevitable. Whether it will happen next time or not remains to be seen. I think it's purely a technical issue.

It is totally where the Apple Watch is going. I think it's just a matter of can they do it? Is the tradeoff worth it? Is the technology there to support that? Can they get that in there? think it's just a matter of can they do it is is the is the trade-off worth it to you know is the technology there to support that can they get that in there or is it just kind of a bridge too far for now and it'll have to be something that happens down the road dale asks when the new watch hardware comes out do you think the first model will stick around at a lower price point i don't because then there will be so many watches because they already have multiple

versions and additions and straps and all that kind of stuff I don't think that there's going to be the old hardware for cheaper I think you might be able to get them refurbed and stuff like that for a while but I'll be really surprised if they keep the original watch around yeah I agree I mean it could happen but I I think they're going to want to just say, here's the new Apple watch and that's it. And then the old ones will go away and the new ones will come and that will be the end of it. I do think Apple would probably like to get the base model lower in price, but they might be able to do that with a new model as well. It's possible that they will do the, you know, a step and a half thing where the new watch

looks more or less like the old watch and they keep a version of the old watch around at a lower price point and just say it has fewer features and it might even be slightly changed, but essentially the first model. I could see a scenario where that happens, but the simplest scenario is just to clear clear the decks and and stop making the old one and just start making a new one yeah joe still says

in the chat room they might just keep the old sport around they could do that they could do that but i think it would just be messy but we'll see i mean it's not the first time they've done this if all the bands are compatible then um I think they could keep it around. If those bands aren't compatible, I'm going to find someone because I bought so many of these things. I know. I know. I hope they are. I think that that would be dumb for them to break the compatibility so quickly.

But, you know, hey, Apple breaks compatibility all the time. That's what I'm told. They move forward on it, right? They just dream about the future the future of watch straps um will wants to know when is mike going to cave and buy a macbook to be like cgp gray i really love gray's naming of macbook adorable and i think i need to start using that in more places i think it's such a fantastic name uh i am gonna wait and see for the next macbook pro um and then i going to make my buying decision

basically because I only ever travel with a laptop now and I take a laptop with me in case I need to do any logic based editing whilst traveling and that thing is so big and heavy my 13 inch MacBook Pro when compared to my iPad right like I bring the 9.7 inch iPad with me when I travel I want to replace it with a thin and light laptop. I would love it to be a MacBook because it's the thinnest and lightest, but I want to see how thin and how light the next MacBook Pros are, how powerful they are

and what other features it might have. And then I'll make a decision from then on, but I'm going to wait. You and Gray talked about this and I think it's a good point, which is when your use case changes, your priorities change. And if you are, and he was doing this, if you are buying a laptop because you use it when you travel, and that's when you

use your laptop, you have to have one because you do need a Mac when you travel, but you now don't use it the rest of the time. You're just using it for travel. Well, you know what? That's probably a different Mac than the Mac you would buy if you were using it for travel. Well, you know what? That's probably a different Mac than the Mac you would buy if you were using it on your desk every day or around the house a lot. It's suddenly the portability aspects become way more important and the MacBook becomes important. I did laugh when you guys did that podcast and he realized that because he had the microphone plugged into the one USB port that his battery was draining and it might run out. That was a beautiful moment.

Welcome to the MacBook. Yeah. He knew this was happening and didn't tell me because he didn't want to worry me. And he also didn't, I didn't think to mention to him, did you buy the adapter? Because I just assumed that he would have bought the adapter. But that isn't what happened.

And then he dropped that information later on. That was funny. I was listening to that actually when I came in to pick you guys up to come over to my house for dinner. And it was kind of funny because I was listening to that coming into the city. And then when I was dropping everybody off, you guys were in the car. And I was like, wait a second, those same voices are in my car again. But now it's the people.

It's like there was a podcast going on in the back are in my car again but now it's the people it's like there was a podcast going on in the back seat of my car there were very there are always lots of moments at wwdc when i get to hear podcasts happening yeah which is always fun to me it is pretty funny it's like oh that those are voices from a podcast or when i hear two people talk and think oh maybe they would be good on a podcast together that happened in in a couple of places. Yeah, see? Chris said, with iOS 10 focusing so much on 3D Touch, will the next iPhone SE have to include it? Have to?

No, I think so many iOS devices don't have 3D Touch that there's going to be an alternative. And the iPhone SE, you know, next iPhone SE, I think is going to be like a year and a half, two years away. So I think maybe it will include it. Does it have to? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not, but it might only because what does an iPhone SE look like in two years? Will it still be, look like an iPhone 5 or will they redesign it while keeping it in that size? That's my guess. I think if they redesign it, they will put 3D Touch in it. How about that? But if it looks like it does now, then no, because then they're saying, we're just going to leave it. We're just going to

keep it as cheap as we can by doing as little as we can. Adding the 3D Touch adds weight and it adds complexity. And do they want to do that or not? So if they redesign it, I say yes, otherwise no. But I think it'll be a year and a half before we see a new iPhone SE. Yeah, I do too. I do too. And I think if they do do another one, they will put 3D Touch in it. But because I think there will be a new design to it. I don't think that they will make another one that looks like this. We'll see, though. I mean, but I would be surprised.

But I think 3D Touch will be more important. But we'll see. I mean, I don't know what they're going to do there in regards to the iPad. I know. You're going to have alternate gestures for this stuff. That's all. I mean, because it's going to be a long time before you can count on iOS devices to have 3D Touch everywhere, if it even gets for the stuff. That's all. I mean, because it's going to be a long time before you can count on iOS devices

to have 3D Touch everywhere, if it even gets to the iPad. I think they're going to have to. I like Federico. Federico wrote this great post about the iPad with WWDC, and he mentioned that he doesn't think he will see 3D Touch

come to the iPad. He said he'd be extremely surprised to see it, as I would, but mentioned that he doesn't think he will see 3D Touch come to the iPad. He'd be extremely surprised to see it, as I would. But mention that he believes that there will be some kind of swipe or touch action that they will just use on the iPad. You could do even a multi-touch action, like a two-finger tap or something like that is the equivalent of a 3D. There are lots of things they could do, and I think they will will i think there will be an equivalent gesture for non-3d touch devices for these features because they want everybody to use these features not just 3d

touch devices they're just marketing 3d touch they want they're talking it up i like look at the awesome things you can do with 3d touch and there's an alternative if you don't but we're not going to talk about that i think that 3d touch in its current iteration will never come to the ipad i just don't think it works. With the screens being as large as they can be, like imagine a 12.9. Imagine holding the 12.9 in the bottom left-hand corner and 3D Touching something in the top right.

That thing is not staying in your hand, right? Like you're going to lose that thing. So that's why I don't expect it to happen, but we'll see what happens there. Finally today, we had another will. We had three wills right in today. Amazing. So the third will mentioned,

did you see the Apple Watch Pride band that they were giving out to employees? Did you see this? I did. It's a beautiful thing. It really was. It was Pride yesterday in a few locations. I think there's different days for pride parades in different places around the world but there was the u.s they were all yesterday i think okay so maybe i'm wrong

on that but there was a the pride march in san francisco yesterday for sure parade and all apple employees i believe got given a rainbow nylon band which i want desperately that was that was will's question right how much do you want one? You say desperately. I say as the proprietor of six colors, yeah, kind of do. I thought that looked beautiful. That's a beautiful thing. So my feeling is get yourself on eBay and watch

because there will be some, I'm sure. We'll just have to keep an eye out for it. I mean, I'm sure. We'll just have to keep an eye out for it. I mean, I'm sure there are third-party ones, but I'm not in the third-party band camp as it is right now because I just hate the idea of my watch slipping off my wrist because I bought a nylon band in San Francisco, an Apple one, and the lugs didn't lock in. Now, that's on an Apple one, so these things can go wrong i am not

i don't want to i just don't want to be in that in that world our expert uh joe steel says prides on all different weekends this was the pride weekend in san francisco there we go la was a couple weeks ago portland was last week uh so yes thank you for the real-time feedback i san francisco see the thing is reading the coverage here in San Francisco, San Francisco, as far as it's concerned, this is the only one. Like, that's like very San Francisco, right? It's like, no, no, this is the real one.

All the others are whatever. Are there others? We don't even know. Because London was this weekend, but I think it was on a different day. Interesting. So what I would say is, also, there's still an opportunity here. This was done in the uh in the rainbow

sequence the like roigy biv sequence uh definitely meant to match the pride flag and things like that uh which means apple still has an opportunity to make a nylon band in the six rainbow apple color sequence which is different um so still an opportunity out there, Apple, for everyone else. For everybody else. Yeah. But it's a beautiful thing. And yeah, I might look around on eBay. I might. You should. All right. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. Or maybe if you're an Apple employee and you want to send yours to Jason as a gift, get in touch with him. I wasn't going to say that, Mike. I'll say it for you. I was thinking it, but I wasn't going to say it.

You know, if you are an Apple employee. I'll look on eBay. You're a big fan of the show. I think you should get in contact with Jason. I'm sure he's probably... Jason6colors.com. Stop. Enough. I assume is your email address.

Enough. Enough. Stop the begging. It's not sophisticated. It's not civilized. It's embarrassing. You're embarrassing me. Stop. is also on twitter for no other reason than just to tweet at him about other things he is at jay snell j s n e double l he writes over at sixcolors.com podcasts at the incomparable.com and also at relay fm as well he does other shows than just the show with me he

does the lovely clockwise with mr dan moran and also the amazing liftoff with mr stephen hackett so you can go and listen to those there if you like um i am on twitter i am at i mike i am yke and i host many shows on relay fm as well um too many lists so just go and take a look there's a i think i don't know like a 25 chance i'm on the show maybe maybe a little bit more than that. So just go to the site, subscribe to the Master Feed, and just press play at random. The number of podcasts that we have between us is enormous. Yeah, we effectively, between me and you, have our own cottage industry. Yeah, it's a big cottage too.

We have a mansion industry thanks again to our sponsors this week the lovely people MailRoute FreshBooks and Ministry of Supply thank you for listening as always and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye everybody