00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 357. Today's show is brought to you by Fitbud, Pingdom, ExpressVPN, and DoorDash.
00:00:36 ◼ ► "Do you plan to buy a Playdate and have you seen the Great Sandwich video that they used?"
00:00:42 ◼ ► I do. So Playdate is this game device from Panic, the makers of great software that are making a hardware device.
00:00:52 ◼ ► There was a prototype at WWDC when we were there in person, so that was a while ago now.
00:01:10 ◼ ► There's so many people in the vein of gamers who look at something like a piece of gaming hardware that has a black and white screen and a weird input thing.
00:01:20 ◼ ► And they're like, "Why would you buy this? It's so dumb." But it's almost like a modern retro game platform.
00:01:28 ◼ ► And the idea is it's a super high quality, clear, high refresh rate black and white screen.
00:01:39 ◼ ► And then they're doing this thing where when you buy it, you get their first season of games auto-delivered.
00:02:01 ◼ ► And I like the idea also of somebody making a game device that is not trying to be anything like...
00:02:12 ◼ ► It's an indie game hardware device, right? From people who understand the software side.
00:02:37 ◼ ► And yet on another level, I'm thinking to myself, "Come on, you should ship the product for us."
00:02:49 ◼ ► Pre-order in July, they're shipping them this year. I am incredibly hyped for this thing.
00:02:57 ◼ ► And it only appeals to me more and more as time goes on. So I'm mega hyped about Playdate.
00:03:06 ◼ ► And again, if you just... I mean, it's not going to make you stop playing on PS5, right? Or your iPhone.
00:03:15 ◼ ► But it looks like it's going to be a great piece of hardware and have a bunch of fun things on it.
00:03:37 ◼ ► I like that... And it is. All these things can exist, and they're all game consoles, sort of, but they're all different.
00:03:52 ◼ ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use ?snelltalk in the Relay FM members Discord.
00:03:58 ◼ ► Spatial audio is in Apple Music. It started rolling out sometime after the keynote last week.
00:04:04 ◼ ► And songs are being added and albums are being added, and they continue to be slowly adding more and more content
00:04:18 ◼ ► I mean, it's fun. I wrote a while ago about how I have a handful of 5.1 mix, so multi-channel mix DVDs,
00:04:28 ◼ ► from the first time, or maybe not the first time, from one of the more recent times that the music industry has tried to push this technology,
00:04:36 ◼ ► where I can put it in a DVD player and listen to it on my home theater, and it sounds great,
00:04:41 ◼ ► because all the sound is isolated, it's coming from all these different speakers. It's really amazing.
00:04:46 ◼ ► And so I've been a believer in multi-channel audio as this high-quality thing that is for a sitting-down listening experience
00:04:56 ◼ ► where you're sort of in the middle of the music and you've got speakers all around you.
00:04:59 ◼ ► And I tried that with Apple TV using spatial audio, the Dolby Atmos stuff on Apple Music, and when it works, it works well.
00:05:10 ◼ ► I'm going to back up. Sometimes it doesn't work. Apple has problems. This rollout is a mess.
00:05:17 ◼ ► What I've found is if you added a song to your library, especially if it was added via iTunes Match,
00:05:24 ◼ ► what happens is the version that you added is overlaid, and the Dolby Atmos version is there underneath, and it won't come out. It won't play.
00:05:33 ◼ ► So anything that I already had in my library from a particular album that was in Apple's own spatial audio playlist, it wouldn't play it in spatial audio. It wouldn't play it in Dolby Atmos.
00:05:45 ◼ ► I've had sometimes, not all the time, sometimes I've had an alert that's like, "Hey, you need to delete this and then add it again."
00:05:57 ◼ ► So there's two things going on here. There's the "Is it a download?" And if you download a stereo file and then they make it a spatial audio file,
00:06:05 ◼ ► it's going to play what's downloaded on your device, so you have to remove it. And that's not great, but there is an alert for that.
00:06:11 ◼ ► But something else is happening here, which is this other thing, which is it exists. So I have Weezer or like, there's like Counting Crow's first album.
00:06:21 ◼ ► There are two songs from that that are on Apple's rock spatial playlist. And it's like, I bought that album. They're a band from Berkeley.
00:06:27 ◼ ► I bought that album in grad school in Berkeley when it was a hit, like very memorable to me. So I have that CD. It got ripped. It got iTunes matched.
00:06:36 ◼ ► It's in my Apple Music library. And those tracks don't play in Dolby Atmos. In Apple's own spatial audio playlist, they don't play in Dolby Atmos.
00:06:45 ◼ ► And what I found out is if I went to the Greatest Hits album, which I didn't buy, and I play those songs there, they're in Dolby Atmos.
00:06:51 ◼ ► And this goes for lots of other albums that I own. Generally, it's things that I ripped on CD, although not entirely.
00:06:59 ◼ ► And so it's just a bug, I think, in Apple Music, where Apple is not saying, "Okay, you've got that, but you're in this position to listen to spatial audio, so I'm going to get you the spatial audio."
00:07:10 ◼ ► Or, "I'm going to ask you, do you want to replace this track with a library track that includes the spatial audio?" It's a mess.
00:07:17 ◼ ► That said, for the stuff that I could play multichannel on my Apple TV in my home theater, some of it is really good.
00:07:31 ◼ ► And I think this is the truth about all this multichannel audio. Some of it is really good, and I think some of it is either pointless or bad.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And some songs, and honestly, I think some songs, some styles of music really open up when you've got the background vocals coming from behind you and the instruments from the side, and there's more isolation of the lead vocal in the front.
00:07:54 ◼ ► Or if you're listening to a symphony or you're listening to jazz, where you've got this whole soundscape.
00:08:01 ◼ ► There are some kinds of styles of music where the point is to just be kind of compressed and noisy, and Weezer is going to be the example I give.
00:08:11 ◼ ► The first Weezer album, which I love dearly, I love those first couple of Weezer albums.
00:08:15 ◼ ► But they are of a 90s, grungy, compressed, rocky style. It is of an era, and it's loud and compressed.
00:08:30 ◼ ► And the multichannel mixes of those Weezer songs I think sound terrible, because it's like everything that that song was, like Buddy Holly let's say, just gets diluted until there's nothing there.
00:08:44 ◼ ► Because they spread it out, and it's like, well, no, the point is not to spread it out. The point is to compress it into a big ball of noise.
00:08:52 ◼ ► So I guess, unsurprisingly, I would say Dolby Atmos music can be good or bad, just like thoughts can be good or bad, or like literally anything could be good or bad.
00:09:04 ◼ ► And some of it is really good. And that was all in my multichannel. The experience in AirPods, and I don't know, I assume you tested this as well.
00:09:12 ◼ ► The experience in AirPods is different, right? Because it's only two speakers. They're on your ears.
00:09:17 ◼ ► And so what it's doing is it's taking the multichannel mixes and it's mixing it down in a particular way with a set of effects to give you a spatial feel from those two speakers that are attached to your ears.
00:09:31 ◼ ► And that's a very different kind of thing. And I think for me the same thing applies, which is some of it sounds really nice, and some of it sounds kind of pointless.
00:09:40 ◼ ► And I can't tell how much of that is because these are fancy, remixed, multichannel kind of things being processed on the fly versus something that was stereo mixed years or decades ago, or whether it's the magic of Dolby Atmos.
00:09:59 ◼ ► I think I've had a better experience, my personal experience has been better. I haven't found anything that I thought sounded bad. I have only listened with AirPods Pro and AirPods Max.
00:10:10 ◼ ► And what I have found is it either sounds really, really good or it just sounds fine. But I will say, though, personally, I really do like this feature a lot and I can't wait for more of my favorite music to get this stuff.
00:10:26 ◼ ► Because to me, what it does is it either does nothing to the experience or significantly elevates the experience for the stuff that I've been listening to.
00:10:36 ◼ ► So I'm really into it. And I think the key really, I think, with a lot of it is, was this music intended to be recorded this way or not?
00:10:47 ◼ ► And I think the better experiences I've had is with the more modern stuff. And so maybe that's going to be one of the key differentiators going forward, but I'm not sure.
00:10:58 ◼ ► I think some of it too is what was the remix, purpose of the remix? So like, when Giles Martin remixed all of those Beatles albums, like Abbey Road and the White Album, there was a multi-channel mix made purposefully.
00:11:15 ◼ ► And so is the White Album, is Abbey Road recent? It's not, but the multi-channel remaster was recent using all the original stuff. But that's such a rarity, right? You do occasionally get this.
00:11:32 ◼ ► And I mean, you've got literally the son of the producer of that record with all the might of the money of the Beatles putting this super high-quality remaster together.
00:11:40 ◼ ► That generally is not going to happen, but those examples are going to sparkle. And yeah, I think honestly, people are talking about lossless.
00:11:49 ◼ ► And I don't begrudge people who really are into lossless, high-quality audio. I accept that there's some percentage, small percentage of the population for whom that will matter and that they can tell the difference.
00:12:02 ◼ ► But this multi-channel stuff, whether the spatial part of it is a gimmick or not, and I think that it can be, but I think it also makes it sound better.
00:12:11 ◼ ► I think that's the bigger issue is what you're doing is you're getting remixing with a sound field in mind and with multiple channels of audio that are then being processed by, in Apple's case, by Apple's own headphones to give you the best experience that they think that they can give you.
00:12:29 ◼ ► I think all that effort means it probably sounds better. It's not necessarily any particular part of the technology that's causing the betterness there, but I think it's the care and the fact that there's more thought being given to the way that this stuff is being received.
00:12:51 ◼ ► Right. So I don't know. I mean, I think this is a really complex topic and I don't think there's a way to say it's great or it's pointless. And I've seen lots of people say both of those things, but I do think that the net result is what you said, which is some stuff sounds really nice.
00:13:06 ◼ ► And I think it also prompts a lot of us to stop and give more attentive listening to our music.
00:13:12 ◼ ► And that's always nice when you aren't just most of my music listening is in the background while I'm working and that's not attentive music listening and it was delightful to sit.
00:13:22 ◼ ► Lauren and I sat in our living room on our couch with our 5.1 audio system around us and we sampled stuff from those Apple spatial playlists and some of it was better than others of it.
00:13:32 ◼ ► But like there were some just fantastic moments in there listening to when doves cry by Prince. I felt like I was inside. I don't know inside Prince's house somewhere. Right. I was at Paisley Park.
00:13:45 ◼ ► Like it was such a hilarious and delightful experience to have that song, which is a very weird sounding song to begin with. I love that song, but it's a very peculiar song all around us.
00:13:56 ◼ ► That was great. And we listened to what Tom Sawyer by Rush, which has all these, you know, all these synths and this drum solo that flies around the room.
00:14:09 ◼ ► And it's like, oh, it's fun to listen to that stuff. And I enjoyed having a more active listening experience too.
00:14:18 ◼ ► So, you know, I think it's good to have people maybe appreciate the music more, but I think in the long run, I'm much more interested in how the spatial stuff works and what stuff I love.
00:14:28 ◼ ► Maybe gets a remaster that makes it sound better as part of this, but Apple's also got a lot of bugs. They got to fix.
00:14:36 ◼ ► All right. Couple of pieces of follow up. Photos does indeed have a feature to ask for certain people, places, holidays, or dates to be featured less often or not at all in the app and widgets.
00:14:49 ◼ ► This is something that I was hoping for. And I still remain surprised that Apple didn't mention this during the keynote.
00:14:56 ◼ ► I know it's more of a downer option potentially, but I think it's still an important one, especially because they really have added a lot of functionality here.
00:15:05 ◼ ► So if you go into a memory or an image, you can select feature less in either in the options. This can be long pressing or on the iPad, you get the three little dots that you can collect.
00:15:16 ◼ ► And it will say, like, you know, do you want what do you want to feature less of? And you get a big option.
00:15:22 ◼ ► You know, like I had this one memory that I tried it on and it gave me like 10 people who I could choose to see less of because they were recognized in that album.
00:15:32 ◼ ► Right. They're giving you all the information that might represent it and letting you choose what is it about this that you don't want to see.
00:15:39 ◼ ► Right. Because you can't just fire off a like, show me less of this photo because there's so much in that photo.
00:15:45 ◼ ► What is it about this photo that you don't want to see? And then you get to say so. It's good. I'm glad they did that.
00:15:51 ◼ ► And it's actually, David and the Discord's made a good point. More of a downer than like the digital legacy stuff, which is true.
00:15:58 ◼ ► Because like when they took it to iCloud, like when you die. Right. Like, so, yeah, I think they should have featured this, honestly.
00:16:04 ◼ ► I think it's an important thing to show that we still have control over the machine rather than the machine just choosing to show whatever it wants to show.
00:16:12 ◼ ► So thank you to everybody that sent me in that and I've played around with it and it was really cool.
00:16:17 ◼ ► Many people found that there were tags for M1X and M1X MacBook Pro in the metadata of the WWDC video that was uploaded to YouTube by Apple.
00:16:27 ◼ ► Are they trolling us? I don't know. My guess is that this is real and that somebody beforehand had been tasked with doing all the tags based on what the contents of the keynote were at some point.
00:16:43 ◼ ► And that nobody revisited it. Right. Which again, you'd say, oh, well, the hell could that be? Apple is such a big company.
00:16:49 ◼ ► How many times have we seen Apple make mistakes about the content and have leaked things in advance?
00:16:56 ◼ ► Do you remember the iPhone 7 where they published a bunch of Twitter ads that showed off the entire phone? I think it was the 7 before the event even began.
00:17:06 ◼ ► And remember when they found parked, I think this was Gee Rambo, found parked at the exact same URL pattern they'd used at the previous event, marketing images of the iPhone?
00:17:22 ◼ ► This is my point is that as big a company as Apple is, I mean, it's also a big company in that these things fall through the cracks and that it is absolutely likely that there was just an organizational thing where the people tasked to do the YouTube keywords, the, I don't know, SEO experts at Apple, whatever they are in the marketing department were given a script and they crafted the tags.
00:17:44 ◼ ► And maybe they put them in YouTube or maybe they were in a top secret Apple document and then stuff got pulled out of the keynote and that document didn't get updated.
00:17:54 ◼ ► I think that's the actually the easiest answer is not Apple thought that they would make, uh, would have a laugh by mentioning products they're probably going to release and giving them names and putting them in the YouTube thing to see if people notice.
00:18:08 ◼ ► Like that's not very Apple. I don't think that that's the case at all. It is more likely. Apple doing jokey tags. Yes. These are not jokey tags. Like M1X MacBook Pro is not a joke tag. That is a real, don't joke about that, right?
00:18:25 ◼ ► Yeah. So I think the most likely scenario is, uh, and also the show was, uh, for those who care about the over and under, like we do, it was short of two hours, right? It could have been a full two hours and it wasn't. And, and I think that there's a moment where I think Craig says something about like, but more on that later or we got more later.
00:18:43 ◼ ► And I thought, I think he's nodding to the fact that they're going to announce max and maybe he wasn't, but it felt to me like that could have had meaning that it ends up not having. So I think it's entirely possible that they, um, most likely scenario is they, they were hoping to get, uh, pro laptops in the, in the event.
00:19:01 ◼ ► And due to production reasons, probably related to those legacy nodes, right? The stuff that Apple can't get enough of to put in their products, that's going to cause reduced ability to fulfill demand, which they talked about in their quarterly analyst call, right?
00:19:19 ◼ ► This idea that, that it's going to hit the Mac and the iPad where there's like stuff that they can't buy that they don't control that's like in every product and they need one and they can't get it. Um, and that meant that they were like, look, if we announce it now, we can't.
00:19:36 ◼ ► We can't ship it in volume enough volume for whatever they, and they probably have an ideal range, right? They probably say, look, when we announced something, we need to open orders for it within two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is.
00:19:48 ◼ ► And then it's got to ship within this window. And if it can't ship within this window, we should not announce it because people are going to forget about it and, or we're not going to be able to fulfill.
00:19:58 ◼ ► And it's going to frustrate people. Cause I think Apple wants Apple, you know, it's great to be sold out of a product, but unlike the makers of consoles and stuff like Apple wants to sell you sell everybody who wants the hot new thing from Apple.
00:20:11 ◼ ► Apple wants to sell it to them as quickly as possible. And if they can't make enough, they'll just wait. So just as an overall, I think there was a bit of a, um, a spectrum last week that we occupied of our positive, negative feelings towards the keynote.
00:20:27 ◼ ► I think in general, I was much more positive than you now that the entire WWDC is over, have your positive, negative feelings changed or during our podcast last week, my thoughts about the iPad became more positive.
00:20:43 ◼ ► Right. Um, I have some frustration about them still not doing enough to kind of embrace the power of the M1, um, especially like the external screen support and stuff like that.
00:20:59 ◼ ► But I, first off, I, I, I really still do believe that what we saw with the multitasking changes was not a, you know, rearranging deck chairs kind of thing of like, let's try it again.
00:21:13 ◼ ► And it was much more of a, um, rethink of how they handle windowing essentially on iPad with an eye toward what they're going to do next. Right. It feels like step one of a longer process that will probably include putting things on external displays, especially since you've got that little three dot thing at the top that is not just a, uh, a button you can tap to get those icons, but it's literally a draggable.
00:21:41 ◼ ► It's a handle for those windows and it's an active window indicator as well. Yeah. It's doing a lot of work. Feels like that that would be a useful thing if you were in a multi window state as well. Right. To drag windows around and to send them places like it feels very much to me like, I mean, okay, I want to believe, right.
00:21:58 ◼ ► It is definitely, there's a conspiracy part of this, but I really do believe that nothing, nothing they, they announced dissuaded me from the idea. And in fact, it persuaded me that this is where they're going, that, that they are thinking big about what they're going to do with iPad, uh, multitasking and windowing in the future, but they need to get their house in order first.
00:22:22 ◼ ► And what's disappointing to me is that they only took this first step and they didn't take the second step, but I feel like they're right on the precipice that they could literally hold this for a year or two, or they could announce like an external display and say, yeah, and it works with the iPad.
00:22:36 ◼ ► And look what we, and look what we did. You can run apps and windows on the iPad and release an iOS update. Like, I think they could do that as soon as they wanted to after this version of the OS ships in the fall next spring, whenever, or they could just hold off another year.
00:22:51 ◼ ► Or two, which is frustrating. Um, and then I wrote a piece for, uh, for six colors, not for Mac world, although it felt like a Mac world article kind of after, you know, it was the right length.
00:23:04 ◼ ► You know, I could have submitted to Mac world and they would have paid me, but I, I, I didn't do that. It was Monday night and it was basically my overall warm feeling about the fact that this felt like the event where Apple finally put together what they've been trying to do for five years now.
00:23:20 ◼ ► Which is align all their platforms so that they don't announce features on the iPhone and they don't come to the Mac or they come half form to the Mac, or they show up on the Mac two years later.
00:23:30 ◼ ► Uh, but instead, like they literally could have gone to the Mac section of the, of the, uh, of the show, had they not held some stuff back, they literally could have gotten to the Mac section and said, we already announced it all.
00:23:42 ◼ ► It's all that stuff we already said, it's also on the Mac. We already told you it was on the Mac. It's on the Mac. That's it. Stop saying Mac. Right? Like that.
00:23:51 ◼ ► It's all remember, like we always have things that are like, well, it's not here. It's not there. It's not there. And this year it just felt like everything is everywhere.
00:24:01 ◼ ► Now that was great. It was, that was super encouraging, uh, that it really did feel like more than many years has been now where Apple will introduce a feature and we just naturally assume we'll wait for it somewhere else.
00:24:18 ◼ ► Live text is a perfect example of it. Right? Live text. Live text, I could imagine they said was just on the iPhone, right? You know, like you could, you know, but it's iPhone, iPad and Mac.
00:24:28 ◼ ► The FaceTime stuff, right? The FaceTime stuff. I absolutely Apple of two, three years ago, the FaceTime stuff rolls out on its iPhone, iPad only. Right? And then I'm like, no, it's on the Mac too. It's everywhere.
00:24:39 ◼ ► Because it's because they've got, they aligned all the subsystems that had drifted away over the years between Mac OS and iOS. They got all of them to work together.
00:24:48 ◼ ► As part of the Apple Silicon transition, they had to do this part. They got the, they did the whole catalyst thing. They got the Swift UI thing. They had been building all of these tools and lockstep, not just for third party developers, but for Apple.
00:25:00 ◼ ► So that Apple doesn't have to build when they announce an app or a feature of their operating system, they don't have to build it two or three times. Right? That was what they had to do.
00:25:10 ◼ ► I mean, from a user's perspective, it's like, Hey, why are you not giving me this feature on the Mac from Apple's perspective? It's like, guys, I can't build this app three times. Right.
00:25:19 ◼ ► And now they don't have to, they build it one time and, and deploy it everywhere. Even shortcuts on the Mac, which seems like, well, it's finally come to the Mac.
00:25:27 ◼ ► But if you look at it, it's a new version of shortcuts that's done in Swift UI with some other stuff, other sprinkles. Um, but like that new interface is also on the iPad and the iPhone.
00:25:38 ◼ ► Like it's across all their platforms because they're not going to have like, well, the Mac version of shortcuts looks a little different. No, it's not different.
00:25:48 ◼ ► It's the same across. And that is, that's good. That's good for Mac users and it's good for people who use the iPad and it's good for people who use both.
00:25:56 ◼ ► So that to me, that is the most positive thing. And that's why I think so positively about this. Also, I think that they didn't do anything that felt overreaching this year where it was like, you know, slow down guys.
00:26:07 ◼ ► Like it's too much. It's too much. This we'd had several years of very dramatic operating system announcements where it's, where it's new chip architectures and, you know, whole new way of doing user interfaces and whole new way of bringing your apps from one of our platforms to the other.
00:26:25 ◼ ► And maybe it's COVID that's, that's helping them kind of play within themselves. But I also find it encouraging that this doesn't seem like a release cycle where Apple is overshooting and is going to make everybody miserable by trying to do too much too soon.
00:26:45 ◼ ► During these busy weeks, we do skip upstream mostly. And there is some stuff that I want to talk about probably next week, even some teasers that Apple has put out.
00:26:55 ◼ ► But there was just one that I wanted to direct people to today, which was the teaser for the morning show season two. So they published this this morning. It looks very good. It looks very dramatic.
00:27:06 ◼ ► I was expecting more COVID in it than what the teaser seemed to show. Like that was, you know, the reports where they were kind of going to add that in and maybe it's just not in here. Right. Like, but it might be a part of the story in the way that the fires were a part of the story last time.
00:27:23 ◼ ► There's a shot of Jennifer Aniston in Times Square and there's a 2020. And I'm unclear whether that's maybe New Year's Eve 2020 where they're going to start this thing and have it be pre-COVID or whether it's 2021 and she's in an empty Times Square and it's during COVID.
00:27:39 ◼ ► I don't know. What struck me about it is we talked about the morning show when it came out that they thought it would be one show and then it turned into something else given like current events.
00:27:50 ◼ ► It turned into something else. And what struck me about this trailer or teaser is they're going with that. Right. Like this this season, I looked at it and I thought this is not what they thought this show was going to be.
00:28:04 ◼ ► No, like at all. They they have had the smart. I think they made the smart move of saying, well, wait a second. What story? What is this show? What story should we tell about this show?
00:28:17 ◼ ► And it seems like a way more dynamic kind of story that they want to tell than what all of us anticipated and what I think the show initially was conceived of being, which was sort of trials and tribulations of people working on the set of a network news show.
00:28:32 ◼ ► And now it's more like people at a network news show have incredibly traumatic events happen to them that causes all of this drama in the in the business and in their personal lives and in the world.
00:28:45 ◼ ► And it's all kind of like caught up together and that that's a much more interesting show to me. So yeah, it looks interesting. September 17th when it comes back, which is also sooner than I expected.
00:28:56 ◼ ► I didn't think we were going to get it this year, but I'm looking forward to it. Apple's going to have a lot of stuff for people to start finally paying for Apple TV plus.
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00:31:33 ◼ ► And then we're going to talk bigger picture about some of the experiences that we've had with some of the stuff that Apple's released.
00:31:38 ◼ ► Right. Now, keep in mind that upgrade last week, for those who listen during the week as a podcast, you know, you listen whenever.
00:31:53 ◼ ► Like, we didn't, it didn't really sink in and we only knew what we had been told by Apple.
00:32:20 ◼ ► So, I wanted to, like, bookend this with our previous discussion of talking about the operating systems coming together.
00:32:28 ◼ ► I think we can kind of see why because there is a selection of macOS Monterey features that are only available on Apple Silicon Macs.
00:33:01 ◼ ► I don't understand why the 3D globe is in there, but honestly, like, I don't, that one is, like, one of these things is not like the other.
00:33:07 ◼ ► My guess is that some of this stuff is, well, we could implement it on certain Intel Macs and they just were like, forget it.
00:33:17 ◼ ► Like, there's not enough here or they're using some particular thing that's only really available on Apple Silicon.
00:33:26 ◼ ► Like, this is nothing kind of major, but, like, if you're on an Intel Mac, Apple is not developing for Intel Macs anymore.
00:33:37 ◼ ► But so much of the stuff, what I said before about how great it is that Apple can move its platforms in lockstep, part of that is that they've got the same chip platform now.
00:33:49 ◼ ► And they're gonna implement it in a way that only really works with the attributes of Apple's own processors.
00:33:54 ◼ ► And they're not gonna make the effort to do, again, remember what I said about we only wanna write one app?
00:34:00 ◼ ► Like, if you're like, oh, well, on the Mac for Intel, we're gonna have to write this thing.
00:34:08 ◼ ► But, yeah, some of this stuff is neural engine, you know, base where they're using machine learning to do various effects.
00:34:15 ◼ ► And I don't know about the 3D globe either, like, something about the implementation, they're like, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna even try to do this on Intel systems.
00:34:24 ◼ ► Although I did love, there was a news report about this story that said, it was in the Mac rumor story, it basically said, it's unclear why this is the case since Google Earth shows a globe on the Mac.
00:34:38 ◼ ► And I'm like, well, I don't think Apple's saying that globes can only be done in Apple Silicon.
00:35:34 ◼ ► you'd get these huge wheels that you could spin around, like a slot machine or whatever.
00:36:08 ◼ ► So, you can spin them, but if you tap, it will bring up a keypad and you can type the time in.
00:36:24 ◼ ► So, it's being contextually aware of what you're doing, and I think that's really cool.
00:36:30 ◼ ► I stand by the fact that I prefer the typing in, and I'm happy that I still have that option,
00:36:40 ◼ ► But I'm just happy that they aren't bringing those wheels back to places where they're not wanted,
00:36:45 ◼ ► which would be on the Mac with Catalyst and on the iPad with a keyboard and mouse or keyboard and trackpad.
00:37:29 ◼ ► All of that information about what's the resolution of the image and what's its size and what format is it in,
00:37:37 ◼ ► like what was the F-stop and what was the ISO and all this kind of information that's been on the Mac version of Photos for a long time.
00:37:54 ◼ ► This is a case where, because it was originally iPhoto, the Photos version on the Mac has always been more.
00:38:03 ◼ ► and there have been features that have been on one or the other, but there were like way more power features on the Mac side.
00:38:09 ◼ ► However, I will point out you still can't add keywords on the iOS side, which I think is kind of maddening.
00:38:26 ◼ ► Jason, why would you need to add keywords? Surely machine learning will give you all you need.
00:38:45 ◼ ► So if you saved an image from Safari or something, it will pop up and say this came from Safari.
00:38:51 ◼ ► I imagine that's probably tied into the whole messages thing too, where photos from messages are going to drift into your photo library.
00:39:21 ◼ ► Like, is it a bug on the iPad that it doesn't show them? Is it a bug on the iPhone that it does?
00:39:26 ◼ ► No idea, but as of right now, there are no titles of what a widget is underneath a widget.
00:39:33 ◼ ► I know from _widgetsmith that this is one of his very biggest feature requests, which obviously you can't deal with.
00:40:03 ◼ ► so they've got something to release on the day that they feel confident will not destroy everybody's data.
00:40:07 ◼ ► And then meanwhile, in the background, they're working on whatever the next release is.
00:40:13 ◼ ► So sometimes it's the second or maybe it's the third sometimes, but they'll do that too, where then they'll eventually--
00:40:21 ◼ ► But what they do-- so maybe there's one or two, and then they get one that they do as a developer beta,
00:40:30 ◼ ► I found-- well, we'll talk about it later, but I think the betas are pretty good already.
00:40:50 ◼ ► so you don't have to delete them or have a wallet full of old tickets and passes to things.
00:40:56 ◼ ► I consider this a bit of a bummer because I deleted stuff I wish I wouldn't have had to delete.
00:41:00 ◼ ► Yeah, so they realized-- I still have my ticket from the 2014 World Series, Game 5, in my wallet,
00:41:08 ◼ ► because it's a memory and it's great, and they realized people do save stuff like that.
00:41:17 ◼ ► There's a date range where it's active and an expiration date, and you can put that metadata in wallet items.
00:41:23 ◼ ► And then by default, if it's not something that is in the present or future, it just hides it,
00:41:37 ◼ ► I have tickets there, things like that I really wish that I still had, but I don't because it was getting too full.
00:41:43 ◼ ► Or like, you know, the flight info from my honeymoon and stuff like that, I wish I still had those things,
00:42:06 ◼ ► I find this very weird, and I've listened to some podcasts with it on, and it's very strange,
00:42:16 ◼ ► It is a thing-- so my receivers in my home theater have for a long time now had this feature,
00:42:23 ◼ ► which is like, try to spatialize something that's only got two-- it processes the stereo,
00:42:48 ◼ ► The Control Center option for text size-- so it's been in there for a while, like the dynamic type selector--
00:42:53 ◼ ► now lets you control the size of text for individual applications as well as the whole system.
00:42:59 ◼ ► So if you have the calendar app open, and you go to Control Center, and you go to the text size,
00:43:05 ◼ ► you can adjust and save a text size that is custom for that app, not just the whole system.
00:43:28 ◼ ► So I think this is fantastic, because dynamic type is awesome, but some apps interpret dynamic type,
00:43:36 ◼ ► And now you can still use dynamic type, and your users can change the size arbitrarily on their own.
00:43:45 ◼ ► Talking about text, the magnifying glass for text selection is back, and it has a new design, which is interesting.
00:43:59 ◼ ► I was in Notes, and I was selecting text, and the way it kind of shows up makes it look like the text is the line above.
00:44:13 ◼ ► They're trying to get it out of the way of your finger so you can actually see it, which is the whole point.
00:44:22 ◼ ► I think they realized that precision tapping with your finger to exactly what letter you want to put the cursor at is not a thing that you can do.
00:44:39 ◼ ► It actually looks very much like a watch that I own, like a world timer watch that I own.
00:44:43 ◼ ► So I bring this up because we were talking about the fact that there weren't any watch faces.
00:44:46 ◼ ► Well, this is the thing. Maybe there will be, but they're going to be in the new watches, not in WatchOS.
00:44:51 ◼ ► Yeah, that's it. Or they're going to at least announce them with the new Apple Watches.
00:44:57 ◼ ► Occasionally what they'll do is they'll announce a thing and there's this feature that's part of the new hardware.
00:45:09 ◼ ► So it's not necessarily the case that these watch faces will only be available on whatever new Apple Watch comes out.
00:45:49 ◼ ► So, yes, this is exactly it, which is I'm not saying that Apple is doing like WeatherKit as a thing for third-party apps in order to, the idea here is that if Apple, Apple could just do its own weather app.
00:46:04 ◼ ► Or Apple could say, we're going to give, we're going to do a safe weather API that's got all this information.
00:46:08 ◼ ► And if other apps want to adopt it, they can and show it in all sorts of different ways.
00:46:12 ◼ ► But it's going to be from our providers and we're going to know the location and we're not going to let you use location checking to do creepy things, all that.
00:46:32 ◼ ► Because what they don't want to do is do a kind of yoink to the Dark Sky API and kill a bunch of apps if it's going to provide a replacement.
00:46:41 ◼ ► Because if it's then going to give a reason for those apps to exist in a year's time, right? That seems a bit mean.
00:46:46 ◼ ► Right, why would you do that? But it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do that.
00:46:49 ◼ ► Although I would say this would be something that would be kind of in keeping with Apple's approach to this kind of stuff recently.
00:47:02 ◼ ► I don't, I mean, the fact that the weather app doesn't exist on the iPad is actually a pretty good reason why.
00:47:19 ◼ ► So anyway, that would be a way that you could have, Apple would basically say, if you want to build a weather app for our platforms, we can't wait to see what you'll do with it.
00:47:42 ◼ ► So I'm pleased that I don't have to do the investigation into which service I want to use.
00:48:04 ◼ ► You know, we said it then and I say it's genuinely, I think one of the very best iOS apps ever made.
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00:49:53 ◼ ► Yeah, watchOS is not great right? Like typically. I don't know if it's like this year but in the past watchOS has been a bit tough.
00:50:01 ◼ ► I use my Apple Watch. I use it all the time. I use it to run. I use apps on it during my run.
00:50:14 ◼ ► And you don't have a second one like you do? Because I'm assuming you've installed the betas on secondary devices?
00:50:31 ◼ ► Although I will say that thus far the experience has been pretty good. Like I mentioned earlier.
00:50:38 ◼ ► It's been pretty good. I have these two iPad Pros side by side and I have one on one and one on the other.
00:50:54 ◼ ► That I would get so frustrated with the beta iPad Pro that I would go to the non-beta iPad Pro.
00:51:03 ◼ ► But I've been ready to bug out at any moment and I haven't had to. So that's encouraging.
00:51:22 ◼ ► But I will say I've had a very similar experience to you. I put it on my larger iPad Pro and I was thinking
00:51:31 ◼ ► But not only has it been rock solid. I've had one crash and only one app that doesn't work.
00:52:03 ◼ ► Right. Like it's the same things. You can put two apps side by side and you can slide in more from the side.
00:52:07 ◼ ► Yep. But this is finally I think the first version that actually makes logical sense as to how you use it.
00:52:15 ◼ ► Like there is a logic to it. Right. That isn't I'm dragging app icons around all the time.
00:52:22 ◼ ► This is why I say that I feel like it's step one of a larger picture is that it feels like they learned from the last few years.
00:52:29 ◼ ► And are like OK what do we do right. What do we do wrong. Whereas five years ago when they did this it was like
00:52:34 ◼ ► can we how do we get two apps on screen. Can we do that. And like we've come a long way since then.
00:52:40 ◼ ► And this feels much more considered. And it's taken them this long to make it usable with keyboard shortcuts.
00:52:47 ◼ ► Yeah I know. I know because the magic keyboard is not the first type of pro keyboard right. We had the smart keyboard before.
00:52:58 ◼ ► So because Apple said that there are keyboard shortcuts but I haven't found them. All right.
00:53:03 ◼ ► So the way that you do it is it's under the globe key. So that's what you're looking for. The globe key is now a system modifier.
00:53:11 ◼ ► So if you hold down the globe key on the iPad keyboard you will see a secondary kind of menu bar system which shows you these are the things that you can do.
00:53:22 ◼ ► They're kind of like global shortcuts for the system. So you can do everything you can bring up control center notification center.
00:53:28 ◼ ► You can show and hide slide over there too. You can. They've also created new versions of like the go home and stuff.
00:53:38 ◼ ► So you can press command H or globe H to go home now. And the way that you do the way that you do the split screen with the keyboard is so you have two apps open.
00:53:48 ◼ ► So you want to swap the right hand application right. I think it's off the top of my head. It's globe shift and the right arrow key.
00:53:57 ◼ ► And it slides the app away and then you can bring up one or you can search you can use spotlight then and whatever app you select will just open on the one on the right.
00:54:07 ◼ ► But also you can now also just press tab and then it selects the home screen so you can use the arrow keys to select something on your home screen as well because they've added that home screen control with the keyboard.
00:54:21 ◼ ► So they have finally made this available. This is something that I've wanted since this became a thing in the first place.
00:54:30 ◼ ► So you can now fully control what's happening with the keyboard and you can do stuff like I think globe F makes the makes an app full screen all that kind of stuff.
00:54:43 ◼ ► So there's like a whole new selection of keyboard shortcuts that live underneath that globe key on the globe.
00:54:49 ◼ ► And the globe is now on Mac keyboards too. Yeah. Apple seems to have decided because it's basically the function key.
00:54:55 ◼ ► But they decided to redefine it as this globe key and it's everywhere. So now now you have yet another keyboard shortcut kickoff key modifier, which is the globe to go with command option and control.
00:55:13 ◼ ► There's still things I haven't gotten used to yet. But some of the basic ones I have started to get used to like you can even cycle through your slide over windows and stuff like that.
00:55:24 ◼ ► It really there's really a lot of power there. And if you use a hardware keyboard and external keyboard, you can remap another key to be globe.
00:55:32 ◼ ► So with mine, like when I've used I used an external keyboard, I remap the caps lock key to be the globe key because makes sense.
00:55:40 ◼ ► I don't need the caps lock key ever. So you can you know, so that's all nice and easy to do as well.
00:55:46 ◼ ► This system has just it's immediately made so much more sense for me. Like I really love it and just little things like the fact that you can create and split multitasking apps in the multitasking view, you know, like little things like that, which I don't need it that often.
00:56:07 ◼ ► But then also moving on again, like talking about shortcuts, you can now control multitasking with shortcuts so you can open apps in a pair.
00:56:18 ◼ ► Right. Which you couldn't do before. So they finally for me added all the features I wanted for multitasking. It's only taken them five years to do it.
00:56:28 ◼ ► I love it. I really, really love it. And it, you know, and again, like is that like looking to the sky? I want to believe it does feel like a more logical. Let's start again from here thing.
00:56:40 ◼ ► Right. Yep. Yep. It does. I mean that that little three dot thing that you can grab and move around.
00:56:51 ◼ ► Essentially on the back. It's the equivalent of that. You grab something and you drag it around.
00:56:56 ◼ ► Okay. I know that everything is just tiled right now, but like that is a grabber to move a window around.
00:57:03 ◼ ► And when you click on it, you get a few options. There is nothing stopping them from putting more options on.
00:57:22 ◼ ► It's effectively the green button, right? Like it changes the size and shape of the window.
00:57:26 ◼ ► Yeah. And it's well, I mean, and if you think about on the Mac, what it's doing is it's saying full size, minimize or close, right?
00:57:36 ◼ ► And on the iPad, what it's doing is different, but it's similar, right? It's similar. Also, by the way, SF symbols, the icons that Apple makes available to all, you know, anyone on its platforms to use for their interface design.
00:57:58 ◼ ► I'm not saying that that is meaningful, but I am really suspicious because those three shapes are in there along with lots of others.
00:58:11 ◼ ► Let's just say it, Jason. Let's just start the like mid-cycle iOS 15 countdown. Like Magic Keyboard, they're going to add full screen support.
00:58:21 ◼ ► I think if they wanted to do something with hardware, like perhaps introduce an external display, that it would be a good time for them to flip the switch on that.
00:58:32 ◼ ► And that they could, they don't necessarily have to wait for iPad OS 16 to do it. We'll see.
00:58:41 ◼ ► Yeah, so shortcuts actually, when we're talking about betas and how we feel about them, shortcuts is not super stable right now.
00:58:48 ◼ ► No, especially on iPad. But look, it is because they have redesigned it. Like we, you know, we haven't really focused a bunch on that because it's got so much other stuff going on, but it is brand new effectively.
00:59:01 ◼ ► Yeah, they really have rewritten the interface and they've made it even more compact. They've added a lot of nice stuff to it.
00:59:08 ◼ ► In general, I think that there's some good additions to shortcuts, including the fact that they built in, they looked at all the things that the automator could do, which quite honestly, there aren't that many things that automator could do, but it looked at them and it basically, they built those in as well across all the platforms where applicable.
00:59:27 ◼ ► So that's great. I have an automator action that does the incomparable voice announcer at the beginning of every episode of my podcast, The Incomparable. There's a robot voice. It's Plain Talk Fred who says the name, the number of the episode.
00:59:46 ◼ ► Yeah, episode 203, July, 2019, that kind of thing, right? Can't do it on iOS. Can't do it. Guess what? You can do it now. You can do that on iOS.
01:00:02 ◼ ► Because you can do a speak, you can do a, you know, generate text with a voice and then follow it with a save file. There's a bug. Plain Talk Fred gets over-modulated and sounds terrible and I already filed a feedback about that.
01:00:25 ◼ ► Yeah, but it's the best. That's why it's the best. Have the other voices been in Radiohead's legendary album, OK Computer? I don't think so.
01:00:33 ◼ ► So that, like they've done all of that stuff to add these capabilities that the iPad and iPhone couldn't do before. But then on the Mac side, like it's all, it's not all there yet, but it's all coming together to have the ability.
01:00:50 ◼ ► It's literally everything that I wanted and more because they are completely embracing, despite the narrative that everybody has, which is like, oh, just wait, Apple's going to lock everything down and they're going to control everything and you're not going to be able to do anything on the Mac anymore.
01:01:04 ◼ ► And Apple's insisted that that's not the case and they have walked the walk. So can you do a Perl script? Can you do a Python script? Can you run a shell script from shortcuts on the Mac? Yes, you can. You can do all those things.
01:01:16 ◼ ► Can you run an Apple script from shortcuts on the Mac? Absolutely you can. It's all in there. Now, in the long run, I do think that there's a question because this is the future of automation on the Mac, they said, right, across all of Apple's platforms and shortcuts.
01:01:31 ◼ ► I don't know what the future of scripting is on the Mac. Like there is a real question about like, does Apple script continue or is there something that is a substitute for Apple script because Apple script has some detailed levels of control that you could probably do with shortcuts and tents, but would require a lot of complexity.
01:01:57 ◼ ► And I wonder about, but it's a multi-year thing. Exactly right. So in the meantime, though, like I first thing I did on the Mac with shortcuts was I built a shortcut that runs a, what is it? It's an Apple script that runs a shortcut that runs a Perl script.
01:02:17 ◼ ► And you're saying to yourself, why? Well, the answer is to test it out, to test it out. And I got it to work. I absolutely did. Well, because I was in BBEdit and I'm like, how do I get this thing to just take the entire text of this document and run it through this Perl script?
01:02:31 ◼ ► And right now in BBEdit, you have to have an Apple script that tells the shortcut, like here's the contents and hands it to it. Otherwise you have to select all the text and choose it from the services menu, which you can do without Apple script being involved.
01:02:43 ◼ ► But the point is not that this is this ridiculous Rube Goldberg kind of device. The point is that you want to go from Apple script to shortcuts. Yep. You want to go from command line to shortcuts. Yep.
01:02:55 ◼ ► You want to go from shortcuts to Apple script. Yep. Shortcuts to Perl. Yeah. Shortcuts to Python. Yeah. Like all of it. Any combination of those things, shortcuts, even in developer beta one is already sitting in the mix there.
01:03:09 ◼ ► And that's good because that means that people can start working with it and then over the long run it will become more and more prominent. And that's going to take the participation of Mac developers and the developers of other apps that are on the Mac.
01:03:22 ◼ ► But again, the beauty of Apple's whole kind of strategy here is if you've got an iPad or iPhone app that does some very clever things, you can bring that over to the Mac and all your shortcut stuff comes with it.
01:03:37 ◼ ► And now you're on all of Apple's platforms. And if I'm a Mac user who wants to use this piece from a traditional Mac app, but also this piece from an iPad app, now I can do it because I can write a shortcut that connects them all.
01:03:51 ◼ ► And if the Mac app only supports Apple script, guess what? I can still do it because I can use Apple script for that and I can use shortcuts for this and I can put it all together and it will actually work.
01:04:00 ◼ ► So yeah, it's exciting. Also, I'll just mention, because I know user automation isn't for everybody that let's not forget. Shortcuts is the best tool ever on the Mac in making user automation understandable for regular users.
01:04:19 ◼ ► I'm not saying it's easy. It is a complicated app, but I am saying I think it's the best one I've ever seen. And it kind of fulfills the promise of Automator, which was 15 years ago, to allow you to kind of use some building blocks to let your device do something that you want it to do that it wasn't written explicitly to do.
01:04:41 ◼ ► I've been able to do way more with shortcuts than I ever was able to do with Automator. Like, I don't know what it was, but it comes to a point with Automator and I just don't understand what's going on anymore.
01:04:52 ◼ ► But shortcuts isn't like that. I have some pretty complicated, for me anyway, shortcuts that do lots of really cool things. Because it's easy for me to understand.
01:05:03 ◼ ► Yeah, I just did a thing the other day, because I realized that we were out for a walk and I was curious about what the temperature was. And I'm like, well, I only have my Apple Watch. I can't look at my web page of my weather station or my widget for my weather station. I only have my Apple Watch.
01:05:17 ◼ ► And I thought, oh, I should do a shortcut for this. Like I went home and I was like, boop, boop, boop, boop. And now I have a shortcut that I can actually ask my Apple Watch via Siri what the temperature is right now at my house.
01:05:29 ◼ ► And it will tell me the temperature and whether it's getting warmer or colder and what the high is. And it's just all, it's a pretty straightforward shortcut.
01:05:37 ◼ ► Oh, I should mention one of the things they did, and I haven't been able to 100% get this to work yet, but I think that it's going to work as the betas progress, is the idea that you won't necessarily need to have one shortcut for Mac and one shortcut for iPad that do the same thing.
01:05:56 ◼ ► And there were workarounds where you could write like a subroutine as a separate shortcut and two, you know, your Mac shortcut and your iPad shortcut could both call it, you know, run that shortcut.
01:06:06 ◼ ► You shouldn't have to do any of that because there's a thing in shortcuts that is a device name. So you can basically say if this is a Mac, do this. If it's an iPad, do this.
01:06:17 ◼ ► And that means that you can have one shortcut that you run and all these shortcuts sync across all the devices. I was able to take my shortcut for posting things to six colors that I wrote for the iPad and run it in BB edit on a Mac on day one without a single change. Right?
01:06:36 ◼ ► Like I just checked the box for make this a service on the Mac. And then I selected my text and chose my shortcut from the services menu.
01:06:47 ◼ ► And it ran and it did it like untouched. So building shortcuts, they sync across iCloud. You can run them everywhere.
01:06:56 ◼ ► And although I'm excited about the idea that they like brought automator compatibility and all of that, the truth is most of my automations on the Mac have shortcuts equivalents already.
01:07:09 ◼ ► So once those are on the Mac, I'll just use those. I'll just use the shortcuts I built on iOS. They were easier to build and I think they're more robust. So yeah, I'm very excited. It's great.
01:07:21 ◼ ► You know, automation on the Mac very rarely gets any time in the sun. Shortcuts has gotten some time in the sun the last few years for automation on iOS, but very rarely does Mac automation.
01:07:34 ◼ ► Really not since South Segoian came on stage introduced by Steve Jobs to launch automator. That was sort of the last time that Mac automation really got a lot of time in the sun.
01:07:46 ◼ ► Pixelmator Pro is going to be getting shortcut support that Pixelmator team announced today. Just saying it's going to be first class, second to none support and they included a screenshot, which is get images, resize to this size using ML super resolution.
01:08:06 ◼ ► And save. But like that amount of power because ML super resolution is an incredible feature of Pixelmator Pro using machine learning to upscale low resolution images and some of the results can be quite astounding.
01:08:21 ◼ ► To be able to have that power just into shortcuts, like to take like 20 images and just batch process them like that. Oh boy.
01:08:30 ◼ ► There's a couple of things that I wanted to say that stuff I haven't really got to try out yet that I'm intrigued about. And I wonder if you've had any time with them. One is all the SharePlay stuff.
01:08:39 ◼ ► Yeah, I haven't used SharePlay yet. I anticipate that in the next few weeks a bunch of us are going to be
01:08:51 ◼ ► I'm curious about what the other applications of this are too and what level of control is afforded. I haven't watched any SharePlay sessions yet, but like what level is afforded to developers?
01:09:01 ◼ ► Well, one of the things that kept going around last week because it was in one of the sessions is using the APIs and stuff from SharePlay to build like collaborative whiteboard applications.
01:09:12 ◼ ► It's not all about let's watch a video together. There is more stuff that you can do with it.
01:09:22 ◼ ► I don't know how much that will get used and all that but like depending on the right app and the right developer and the right, you know, set of users.
01:09:28 ◼ ► It could get really interesting where Apple is not just about SharePlay. SharePlay isn't just watching Ted Lasso together, right?
01:09:37 ◼ ► SharePlay is potentially if you and your colleagues have an iOS app, you can collaborate inside it just using this. Like that's it. Like it's your collaboration tool.
01:10:03 ◼ ► Well collaborative calculating, right? Like everybody gets to enter in a number. We'll see where this goes, right? Oh no, he pressed plus. What happens next?
01:10:15 ◼ ► Like if you're playing a Dungeons and Dragons game or something like that or anything that involves dice, imagine a shared dice tray where everybody rolls and it goes in the same and everybody can see the same dice tray and all that.
01:10:27 ◼ ► I don't know whether that's practical or not, whether it's possible with these APIs or not.
01:10:30 ◼ ► But like that's really interesting. The idea that it's not just I'm going to watch a movie with you, but that I could use sort of any number of app with people that I know.
01:10:42 ◼ ► Also, Quick Note is one that I haven't really got my head around yet. I feel like I need a lot more time with this.
01:10:48 ◼ ► Like one of the things that I was quite surprised about with Quick Note is the notes are saved in a separate folder in the Notes app called Quick Note, which is not really what I want to do.
01:10:58 ◼ ► You can move them, you know, so once you've started your Quick Note, you can then move it and make it like a real note.
01:11:04 ◼ ► But I was playing around with it and thought something was quite cool that like if you're on a web page, you get a button that you can press to add a link and fly around web page to web page to web page and keep adding links.
01:11:23 ◼ ► It's just everywhere you go, it's going to say, do you want to take this from what you're doing? Which I like that as an idea.
01:11:29 ◼ ► I think it's interesting on the Mac, you can have all sorts of assistive apps that do that. On iOS, obviously, you can't.
01:11:38 ◼ ► And so platform owner doing something like this, it's like, it's good because who else is going to do it?
01:11:45 ◼ ► I haven't used this yet. I don't know if it's in the iPad beta, but if it is, it seems like it's only like you can only bring it up with a pencil, which is like,
01:11:57 ◼ ► Or Globe Q. Okay, great. My point there is that sometimes I'm, a lot of times I do a lot of reading in bed in the morning with my tea and my breakfast and I'm sitting there reading a lot of stuff.
01:12:06 ◼ ► And I would love to sort of swipe from somewhere and get a Quick Note and add a note in about something.
01:12:13 ◼ ► And at least for now, I'm not doing that. So yes, Globe Q. Okay, maybe I'll do that. But it's a, I want to see this more. It's an interesting idea.
01:12:23 ◼ ► Also, not to get back to my conspiracy theory, Myke, about windowing. And I know I said this last week too, but I'm just going to say it again.
01:12:33 ◼ ► Look at that Quick Note window on iPad. Look at it. It is a floating window. It is a window that floats over other items.
01:12:45 ◼ ► Windowing is here. It's already here, people. Follow the money. It's already here. Sorry, I lapsed into conspiracy theory there. But like, it's very hard not to look at Quick Note and say, well, clearly Apple's already building multi-window things on iPad because, because guess what?
01:13:04 ◼ ► Sometimes having a window floating on top of other windows is useful. So maybe we should do that. Maybe we should have more of that.
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01:15:55 ◼ ► And I guess, and I think it's maybe been exacerbated potentially by people when they started using it.
01:16:06 ◼ ► I have used Safari a lot on the iPad, a little bit on the iPhone and a little bit more than that on the Mac. Mostly on the iPad.
01:16:30 ◼ ► I'm going to predict that I think that this is an area where what they ship in the fall is not going to be what we saw in the videos last week.
01:16:40 ◼ ► And that they're going to get a lot of feedback that's going to make them have to adjust what they're doing.
01:16:46 ◼ ► Which wouldn't be the first time for Safari, right? They've had this exact thing before with tabs.
01:16:51 ◼ ► Exactly. And I think, and not the first time in a beta cycle that there hasn't been something, you know, it doesn't always happen.
01:16:56 ◼ ► Sometimes we have that where everybody says, "Oh, well this will obviously change." And it doesn't.
01:17:09 ◼ ► Personally, I think Accidental Tech Podcast talked about this for approximately four hours in their last episode.
01:17:24 ◼ ► Like, I'm resistant to ripping on something that is trying to do something different as a knee-jerk reaction.
01:17:32 ◼ ► Because everything that's different, you're going to have resistance to. Because you're used to it the way it was.
01:17:38 ◼ ► But I am still kind of mystified by some of the prioritization that Apple has made with Safari.
01:18:01 ◼ ► But like, for me, my usual tab state is a few tabs, and I navigate them by being able to read what they are.
01:18:12 ◼ ► And Safari, the new Safari seems to want to insert everyone in a state where you have perpetually too many tabs open, even if you only have a few.
01:18:23 ◼ ► And therefore you can't see what the page is that you have open until you click on it or tap on it.
01:18:30 ◼ ► Other than by identifying it by the favicon and the first few letters of the first word of the page.
01:18:50 ◼ ► Because even on my iPad, and I have a 12.9-inch iPad, and I don't have that many tabs open.
01:18:56 ◼ ► But because it has to fit all the other user interface elements in there, including the big URL/search bar,
01:19:10 ◼ ► Especially if they're from the same website, then I really can't tell because the favicon is the same.
01:19:21 ◼ ► I get what they're trying to do, which is the whole interface theme of iOS 15 is get things out of your way.
01:19:35 ◼ ► But to cram everything into that single bar, and they've been headed for this point, right?
01:19:41 ◼ ► They did this in the Finder a couple years ago, where they crammed everything into one row that used to be in multiple rows.
01:19:48 ◼ ► But legibility of tabs, especially when you—I get that some people have a thousand tabs open, and they can't read their tabs and all that,
01:19:59 ◼ ► And even then, even if you've got a thousand tabs open, you need some way to navigate them where you can identify them on site.
01:20:06 ◼ ► So the benefit you get with having your window be slightly less tall, which I get they have widescreen displays on their devices,
01:20:24 ◼ ► But I think this is misguided, and I think that either they need to rethink the metrics,
01:20:31 ◼ ► and they need to make those tabs wider and see if that works, because they're way too narrow now,
01:20:36 ◼ ► or they need to perhaps give people the option of having it be on two lines instead of one,
01:20:47 ◼ ► Safari, that one interface change has made using Safari on my iPad terrible, because I relied on knowing where my tabs were, and now I don't.
01:21:02 ◼ ► Some people will use it more than other people, but the idea that you're sort of creating these permanent iCloud synced tab groups that go from device to device,
01:21:14 ◼ ► But all you're doing is asking people to have more sets of tabs that they need to identify,
01:21:29 ◼ ► because I actually—I like the idea that they brought a lot of the bar down to the bottom,
01:21:38 ◼ ► and essentially it is the URL bar, but it's also the tab bar, and you can swipe around like you're doing multitasking.
01:21:50 ◼ ► It requires web developers to change their sites, because the URL bar floats over content on web pages and covers it.
01:22:09 ◼ ► in order to change where you draw content on your pages, which also lots of sites won't do that,
01:22:16 ◼ ► But the part that gets me is I get that you want—on big phones, you want to be able to put the content in an area that is reachable.
01:22:24 ◼ ► I think that's commendable, and I think switching between tabs on the iPhone specifically was not great,
01:22:33 ◼ ► However, then you tap on the address field, and the keyboard slides up, and the thing you tapped just moved.
01:22:48 ◼ ► And yeah, it's just up a little bit higher, and then you can reorient and you can find it again.
01:23:02 ◼ ► again, I get why there's stuff down there, but I feel like probably the solution here was to put the URL bar up at the top
01:23:22 ◼ ► I'm sure that this whole design on all these platforms got a lot of thought from a lot of smart people.
01:23:31 ◼ ► I wonder if maybe their web design people don't like it, but that's what we're doing, so they're going to talk about it.
01:23:44 ◼ ► But this design, I know it must have been well thought out, but it doesn't feel well thought out.
01:23:55 ◼ ► I have only tried it out on my iPad, and my main issue with the design is not the tab stuff as such.
01:24:17 ◼ ► To share something, you don't have to tap that and then press the share button, then you're given the share sheet.
01:24:27 ◼ ► What I will say is, obviously, a lot of these changes have been done to bring tab groups.
01:24:33 ◼ ► I really like tab groups as an idea, and it works for me with the way that I browse the web
01:24:40 ◼ ► because I have on all my devices seven pinned tabs, and therefore when I'm recording shows
01:24:47 ◼ ► or general admin stuff or whatever for my various things, and just putting them all in one tab group,
01:25:00 ◼ ► I would just move to my recording tab group, and it's there with Google Docs open and everything.
01:25:09 ◼ ► And if you do your research in a tab group, you can also drag the tab group out and all the links come.
01:25:21 ◼ ► I just, you know, like, hopefully they can tidy some of the UI stuff up and leave this feature intact.
01:25:27 ◼ ► I think this is the challenge, is that Apple has decided that what people want is browser Chrome to be gone
01:25:39 ◼ ► And I, again, I applaud the idea of getting the Chrome out of your way and letting the content shine,
01:25:59 ◼ ► And I think the whole point of having the tab system is that tabs are important and people use tabs, right?
01:26:13 ◼ ► they've created a great new tab system and made tabs less legible, in some cases a lot less legible.
01:26:25 ◼ ► There is a bunch of stuff under that menu that didn't used to be, you know, or was, you know, it was a tap away and it's still a tap away,
01:26:47 ◼ ► And your design imperative here is actually undercutting your feature imperative, which is that people love tabs.
01:26:56 ◼ ► Like, people love tabs, so we've given them all these features about tabs that they can't see because the tabs are too small, and they're illegible.
01:27:12 ◼ ► So when I would go up with the cursor to the tab, the tabs were so small that all it would do was select the X.
01:27:25 ◼ ► And again, it's a beta, but I think that there are larger fundamental conceptual issues here that they have to address.
01:27:36 ◼ ► I don't know if the changes will satisfy anybody, but I feel like there will probably be changes in the beta.
01:27:48 ◼ ► And right now, like, again, like the colored background thing, I actually think is really cool.
01:27:54 ◼ ► The idea that we're going to take the Chrome and we're going to kind of hide it away and make it part of the web page as much as we can.
01:28:06 ◼ ► I don't have a problem with most of what's in here, but I don't understand their imperative to smash every little bit of interface they've got to get like, on my iPad, I have a 12.9 inch screen.
01:28:35 ◼ ► And the current Safari design basically says, we don't care what you want, and we don't care what size your screen is.
01:28:44 ◼ ► The important thing is not tab legibility or the availability of toolbar buttons or anything else.
01:28:58 ◼ ► And whoever made that decision at Apple needs to be pushed back on by everybody else at Apple who has a say in this because they screwed it up.
01:29:17 ◼ ► Like, I think the imperative here and the idea here is good, but not giving users choice and making the decision that access to the share button and access to the first word or two of a tab is less important than an extra line on the webpage.
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01:31:49 ◼ ► Detroit wants to know, do you imagine that universal control could change how you use your devices at your desk
01:31:58 ◼ ► Now you, I don't know for me because I have a giant iPad or iMac screen in front of me.
01:32:16 ◼ ► But I keep thinking about you and how this might be a feature that you would use a lot.
01:32:30 ◼ ► I've had my iPad open just kind of like on the desk next to me and I'm just like moving over and trying out different things.
01:32:40 ◼ ► I could also imagine a world in which I buy one of these many mounting things and mount an iPad to my desk, right?
01:32:55 ◼ ► There are some things that I like to do with iOS and iPadOS or some apps experiences that I find nicer.
01:33:15 ◼ ► So I'm recording UV now and I have been for the last few weeks on the 21 inch iMac that Apple sent over.
01:33:36 ◼ ► I could very much imagine having an iPad on the other side of it and get real command center kind of feel going on.
01:34:23 ◼ ► Like they throw all these things at you and there's so much stuff and there's always new things.
01:34:57 ◼ ► I see some of the usual suspects at other events, but it's the people who get invited to come.
01:35:20 ◼ ► And it's not like it isn't a grind remotely, but remotely I'm entirely focused on my job.
01:35:27 ◼ ► And believe it or not, having fun with friends at WWDC is counterbalanced by me feeling like every moment I'm having fun, I'm not doing my job.
01:35:57 ◼ ► And I almost said a new iPad event, but really it's like I like a new Mac event I think the best.
01:36:10 ◼ ► I'm often under embargo for that event, which means I'm getting the hardware not before it's announced, but before -- sometimes it's before it's announced, but oftentimes it's before it's available to the general public.
01:36:23 ◼ ► Typically you'll get not within an event, but you might get hardware before it's announced and then there's a press release, right?
01:36:42 ◼ ► But even if it's something where they announce it all, like at Brooklyn when they did the new MacBook Air along with the iPad Pro and the other stuff, that Brooklyn event, there was the new Mac Mini and the new MacBook Air.
01:36:54 ◼ ► And I love that because not only was that a fun event and it puts the Mac in the spotlight, but I end up with the hardware and I get to do a Mac hardware review and I love a Mac hardware review.
01:37:10 ◼ ► Those reviews, the iPad and Mac reviews, especially iPad Pro and Mac reviews, are my favorites.
01:37:17 ◼ ► And I guess the other thing about WWDC is that it leads to a -- it has a weird output where it's sort of like we talk about it for a while, but it doesn't really come due -- I mean, there's the public beta releases, I'll probably write a bunch of stuff.
01:37:33 ◼ ► But after WWDC, there's this kind of general busyness but not super busy where you know that you have to cover this stuff. Federico deals with this with his iOS review, right, which is the work begins, but it's not a frantic dash to a week out or a day out or two weeks out.
01:37:59 ◼ ► So that is actually I would say a sort of case against WWDC is it's just sort of like, oh, geez, the work begins, right?
01:38:11 ◼ ► So as much as I like about WWDC, that's my answer, I think, in the end is a Mac hardware event is a lot of fun.
01:38:21 ◼ ► Rosemary asks, if you could choose any color for the MacBook Pro refresh, what would it be? Not one of the iMac colors.
01:38:31 ◼ ► And they're both based on the idea of Pro, right? Like I'm being realistic here to what I think I could expect.
01:38:52 ◼ ► Give me that in a Mac Pro or more realistically, a nice dark blue, something akin to that Pacific blue, I think would look really nice on a laptop.
01:39:22 ◼ ► Dinesh asks, should I sell my 2017 MacBook Pro and get the latest M1 MacBook Pro or should I wait for the M1X?
01:40:00 ◼ ► It's a great computer and I've loved using mine, but it didn't seem like one was around the corner when that came out.
01:40:26 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade
01:40:30 ◼ ► or use question mark #askupgrade in the Relay FM members Discord, which you can get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus.
01:40:36 ◼ ► Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up now and you will get longer ad-free episodes every time we publish Upgrade.
01:40:43 ◼ ► That could be weekly. Sometimes there's extra ones and you even get longer versions of those too.
01:40:51 ◼ ► Thanks to ExpressVPN, DoorDash, Pingdom and Fitbod for their support of this week's episode.
01:40:56 ◼ ► You can go to sixcolors.com where you can find loads of articles that have been written over the last week or so.