00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 308. Today's show is brought to you by PDF Pen from Smile and Fully.
00:00:23 ◼ ► Summer of fun, my friend! Summer of fun! Yeah! It's gonna be a fun one today, man. Oh boy. We do.
00:00:28 ◼ ► We have a fun guest later on in the episode. We're gonna be joined by Steven Hackett and we're gonna
00:00:32 ◼ ► be doing a draft of sorts, kind of. We're gonna be talking about, last time we spoke about the sounds
00:00:44 ◼ ► Hold them in your mind. Think of them. Imagine them as we paint word pictures of what the icons
00:00:48 ◼ ► look like. But we have a #SnellTalk question, comes from Mark and Mark wants to know, Jason,
00:01:05 ◼ ► So, not my favorite. Not my favorite thing. But if I did need to wear a costume at Comic-Con,
00:01:31 ◼ ► so maybe I would go with that. So that's my Doctor Who fan's answer. The second Doctor is seen in the
00:01:37 ◼ ► episode "The Two Doctors" because he had gray hair then and I have gray hair, so that would be
00:01:44 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a SnellTalk question to help us open an episode of Upgrade,
00:01:50 ◼ ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or use the command question mark SnellTalk in
00:01:58 ◼ ► Some follow up for you, Jason. This one is kind of like follow out for the rest of the week,
00:02:04 ◼ ► but maybe kind of also in the past. We'll see. So there's just a few things happening this week,
00:02:09 ◼ ► which I think could be interesting and I want to mention we may talk about them on our next episode.
00:02:13 ◼ ► So on Wednesday this week, a bunch of CEOs from technology companies are appearing in front of the
00:02:19 ◼ ► Congress in the US virtually to talk about antitrust complaints. I believe this is Sundar Pichai of
00:02:26 ◼ ► Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Tim Cook of Apple. I think they're
00:02:31 ◼ ► the four that are going to be appearing in front of the... is it the Congressional Committee,
00:02:39 ◼ ► Subcommittee for Antitrust, I believe is who they're going to be talking to. But I'm intrigued
00:02:44 ◼ ► about this because it's either going to be really interesting or an absolute train wreck.
00:02:55 ◼ ► like how does my granddaughter send iMessages kind of conversation. But my hope would be
00:03:02 ◼ ► that they're actually going to have intelligent conversations about antitrust. So yeah, I'm keen
00:03:09 ◼ ► to see what happens with this one. So we may touch on that next week, depending on what happens.
00:03:18 ◼ ► And then on Thursday, Apple will be replying its quarterly earnings. And I'm intrigued to see if
00:03:23 ◼ ► these two play into each other in any way. Yeah, right. Will Tim have... maybe some of his
00:03:30 ◼ ► pre-determined comments will appear in both places. That wouldn't surprise me. Save a little time.
00:03:35 ◼ ► Because everything Tim says, they've gone over it, right? Tim is a very careful, controlled guy who
00:03:41 ◼ ► they've got the message, they'll control the message. But yeah, we'll see what the COVID-19
00:03:46 ◼ ► effect is on Apple's business too. And there's still not been a macOS public beta. So I don't
00:03:51 ◼ ► know whether that's going to come. They originally said it would be by the end of July and that's
00:03:54 ◼ ► this week, but who knows? We live in strange times. Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't.
00:03:59 ◼ ► Same for watchOS. But the watchOS one, I wouldn't be surprised if it was later. The macOS one,
00:04:05 ◼ ► it's not new to have public beta for macOS. I think understandably, they kind of held off on
00:04:12 ◼ ► this one because Big Sur was such a top to bottom change that they may have wanted to really make
00:04:17 ◼ ► sure they were confident before they put the public beta out. But have you used much of beta...
00:04:22 ◼ ► is it beta 3 or beta 2 of macOS now? Is it 3? It's developer beta 3. And how is it feeling,
00:04:29 ◼ ► developer beta 3? It feels okay. Some apps are... like preview, I couldn't launch in beta 2.
00:04:37 ◼ ► It would just spin and then crash. And it launches in beta 3. So that's a 100% improvement over beta
00:04:43 ◼ ► 2. It seems okay, but I'm not doing my primary work on it or anything. It's basically a stock
00:04:48 ◼ ► laptop with the new OS on it. So it seems fine. It looks great. I have some issues with the icons,
00:04:57 ◼ ► but we'll get to that. That's some great news for you, Jason. There will be new emoji after all.
00:05:03 ◼ ► So we'd previously been talking about the fact that... this is ages ago now... that there would
00:05:08 ◼ ► be no new emoji for 2021 because the Unicode consortium was delaying the agreement of Unicode
00:05:14 ◼ ► 14 because of COVID-19. They were deciding they're not going to get together and that all of the
00:05:19 ◼ ► individuals on the board probably had things in their companies that they're a part of. Because
00:05:26 ◼ ► the Unicode consortium is made up of people typically that are a part of larger organisations
00:05:32 ◼ ► like Adobe and Apple, Microsoft and Google. And they were like, "Oh no, we'll just leave it for
00:05:38 ◼ ► a year because we have other things to work on." But there is now the announcement of emoji 13.1
00:05:57 ◼ ► as well as new gender options for the bearded person emoji." It's going to be a much smaller
00:06:02 ◼ ► emoji release if all the technology companies just follow the 13.1 spec. I mean, of course,
00:06:09 ◼ ► they can do whatever they want really. And maybe more gets added to this in the future,
00:06:13 ◼ ► I don't know, but at least there will be some emoji in 2021 after all. Hooray to everybody.
00:06:20 ◼ ► That's good. The world needs more emojis. And so let's go for it. That sounds good to me.
00:06:27 ◼ ► And it means that my favourite episode of Connected will exist next year. So that's good.
00:06:32 ◼ ► Yeah, in a much, much smaller scope, I reckon. It might only be a mini topic, not a full topic.
00:06:38 ◼ ► That's okay. It's fun. For those who have not heard, Myke and Steven quiz Federico on what
00:06:46 ◼ ► each icon image represents. He has to guess what they mean. And if you haven't heard those,
00:06:52 ◼ ► it's amazing and you should. The Jeremy's they're called now. Named immortalized for Jeremy Burge.
00:07:00 ◼ ► I will put in the show notes a link to the Jeremy's from 2019 in case you want to hear.
00:07:16 ◼ ► I have some upstream headlines. They're all Apple focused. The trailer for the second season of For
00:07:29 ◼ ► What I've heard is that they've shot much of it, but not all of the season. So they were able to
00:07:35 ◼ ► put a trailer together based on what they've already been working on and producing. I've also
00:07:41 ◼ ► heard that they're coming back to the set soon. I don't know where this is shot. It might be in
00:07:48 ◼ ► Vancouver, in which case Canada is in better shape than the US and they might be in better shape to
00:07:52 ◼ ► resume this. But I don't know where. I don't know. I've heard that they're gearing up to continue to
00:07:58 ◼ ► finish shooting for it. So they it's one of these cases where they I'm sure they don't want to
00:08:05 ◼ ► release a partial season, but they're not quite done, but they've been able to do some of the
00:08:09 ◼ ► production and they obviously are confident enough that they put out a trailer. So that's great.
00:08:13 ◼ ► Love this show. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. The trailer itself looks good, right?
00:08:20 ◼ ► It's intense, right? Because it's the 80s and there's like Ronald Reagan and there's the
00:08:24 ◼ ► Soviet threat and it's the Cold War, but then there's a shot of astronauts in spacesuits on
00:08:36 ◼ ► Yeah. So for all mankind, the Cold War, is it going to get hot on the moon where it's very cold
00:08:42 ◼ ► and hot? I don't know. Yeah, I am very much looking forward to that. That's going to be
00:08:48 ◼ ► really cool. Apple have acquired the rights to Fireball, a documentary from Werner Herzog,
00:09:07 ◼ ► There we go. I mainly included this link in the show notes today because I knew you would want to
00:09:15 ◼ ► do a Werner Herzog impression. Of course. Fireball explores how shooting stars, meteorites, and deep
00:09:22 ◼ ► impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds and on our past and future.
00:09:28 ◼ ► When humans came out of a cave 80,000 years ago and looked at the stars, what were they thinking?
00:09:38 ◼ ► which is of importance because according to a report from Fast Company, Apple is looking to
00:09:44 ◼ ► vastly increase its feature film catalogue due to the success of Greyhound, which we spoke about
00:09:50 ◼ ► last time. They want to increase their movie output to "Netflix-like levels," according to
00:09:56 ◼ ► sources, potentially looking to have a new movie every month with two to four of these being big,
00:10:06 ◼ ► And then filling out the rest of this slate with documentaries like the Werner Herzog movie
00:10:17 ◼ ► the pandemic is the reason why, but I wonder if a change has been made now because it used to be
00:10:26 ◼ ► It's like that story about Quibi that I think we talked about briefly. Quibi, the story is
00:10:36 ◼ ► that they got everybody's rejected ideas pitched to them. Nobody pitched their A-level ideas to
00:10:42 ◼ ► Quibi, but they had stuff that got rejected and they're like, "All right, well, how about Quibi?"
00:10:45 ◼ ► And Quibi's like, "Yes, please, that's great. You're a star. We'll do this idea." And it's
00:10:49 ◼ ► like, "Yeah, this is the idea no one liked, but great. Pay me." I feel like maybe streaming movies
00:10:55 ◼ ► in general, and I'm not saying there weren't good streaming movies, but that a lot of them was sort
00:10:59 ◼ ► of like it was B-list, C-list stuff where it was maybe it was cheap or maybe it was just an idea
00:11:04 ◼ ► that people didn't like. And it was very rare that I saw a movie on streaming, an original film that
00:11:10 ◼ ► I thought was good. Not that it didn't happen, but it was really rare. And during the pandemic,
00:11:15 ◼ ► they brought a bunch of movies sort of out of theaters and onto streaming, and I've found more
00:11:22 ◼ ► movies that I've watched and enjoyed. I probably watched and enjoyed original streaming movies more
00:11:28 ◼ ► in the last two months than ever before put together. And it makes me think, "You got to
00:11:35 ◼ ► keep this up, right? Like this works. Like having good movies on streaming works." And I know that
00:11:40 ◼ ► there's the theater and there's the potential that at some point the theaters are going to come back
00:11:43 ◼ ► and they're going to have a market to them, but it feels like this is a good approach and that they
00:11:49 ◼ ► should do more of these. And they don't all have to even be expensive blockbusters. I really loved
00:11:53 ◼ ► Andy Samberg's movie "Palm Springs," which is on Hulu. They bought it at Sundance Film Festival,
00:12:00 ◼ ► and it got released in like, I don't know, drive-ins or something, but basically its whole
00:12:03 ◼ ► release was on Hulu. And it was cheap. It was like $5 million, supposedly, to make it. And it was
00:12:11 ◼ ► really good and fun. And I would say there's more variety you can do with streaming movies. They
00:12:19 ◼ ► don't have to be huge blockbusters, but you can have a variety of movies that have a broader
00:12:24 ◼ ► appeal and that maybe are in your A-list and your better B-list ideas. And "Greyhound" was good,
00:12:31 ◼ ► but again, "Greyhound" was going to be in theaters and then it was on Apple TV. So I think Apple
00:12:36 ◼ ► doing this is great. They should do more of it. And I would like to see more movies on streaming
00:12:40 ◼ ► in general from all the services that don't feel like they're the ones that weren't good enough
00:12:44 ◼ ► to be in the theater. I would say, like you mentioned "Palm Springs," I haven't seen that yet,
00:12:48 ◼ ► we're going to watch it soon, but I watched the Eurovision movie this weekend, the Wolf
00:12:52 ◼ ► Arrow Eurovision movie. Right. Similar, like that was a good movie. I enjoyed it. Like I had fun.
00:12:57 ◼ ► Like it didn't feel like the streaming service movie, as you're mentioning, right? Right. So
00:13:04 ◼ ► like, you know, it's like a similar thing for me. Like get good people, have them make good movies,
00:13:11 ◼ ► But this whole approach, if you're going to do it, now is the time to do it. Because there are
00:13:19 ◼ ► movies out there that you can buy. And if you can do it and make a big enough impact and everyone
00:13:23 ◼ ► makes a ton of money, you will change what it means to release a big movie, right? Like this is,
00:13:39 ◼ ► This is the time to spring because the theaters are, we've had so much that's been dictated by
00:13:44 ◼ ► tradition, like, well, the theaters, and now it's, now there's this added level of risk for
00:13:54 ◼ ► but the rest of the world is getting better and all that, the pandemic puts a layer on top of
00:14:00 ◼ ► all of your guesses about what the future of theatrical release is going to be. And as an
00:14:06 ◼ ► executive making movies, you've got to make a calculation about where you can get, maximize
00:14:11 ◼ ► the profit and having risk be part of that calculation, you've got to look at it and be like,
00:14:18 ◼ ► wow, do we really want to put, like, I would imagine those executives are thinking, one,
00:14:24 ◼ ► are there movies that we should pull and just put on streaming? If we can sell them, especially if
00:14:27 ◼ ► the streaming services will pay us, or if it's our streaming service and we gauge it to be worth it.
00:14:32 ◼ ► And second, I, if you're like Marvel, do you look at this and say, why don't we change the
00:14:38 ◼ ► balance here and make fewer movies that are destined for the theater and lean more into
00:14:43 ◼ ► the Disney+ stuff? Because that's a good hedge against the box office. Because even if theaters
00:14:58 ◼ ► At the levels that they used to for a while, if ever. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting time.
00:15:05 ◼ ► And if you're Apple or Netflix or anybody who has money to spend on this kind of content,
00:15:11 ◼ ► do you overpay a little bit in order to get, just take the lunch of the movie theaters and change
00:15:18 ◼ ► everybody's minds about watching movies on streaming to the point where you can deal, like,
00:15:23 ◼ ► almost a death blow to movie theaters? I mean, you can't kill, I don't think any of them are going to
00:15:28 ◼ ► kill them, but they could hurt them. They could hurt them and they could really change the public's
00:15:32 ◼ ► perception of movies at home. Because for a lot of movies, it's a really nice experience to watch
00:15:40 ◼ ► them at home. And I think people are learning that even more now. So I don't know. It's maybe,
00:15:45 ◼ ► it may be a risk worth taking. And I wonder, you know, there are a couple of movies out there now
00:15:51 ◼ ► that are getting like indefinite delays. And like, I wonder, could Apple convince Nolan to give them
00:15:56 ◼ ► Tenet? It seems incredibly unlikely because, you know, he really wants the IMAX. Christopher Nolan
00:16:02 ◼ ► wants things like, you know, IMAX and on film, right? So that seems like it's almost an impossible
00:16:06 ◼ ► thing, but there might be others out there. I'm still baffled that, so Disney has a movie that was
00:16:14 ◼ ► developed at Fox called New Mutants, which is an X-Men movie. It's essentially the last X-Men movie
00:16:21 ◼ ► made at Fox. And now they've been sort of sucked into Marvel. That movie has been delayed and
00:16:28 ◼ ► reshot and delayed and delayed and delayed. I don't know why they haven't just put it on Hulu.
00:16:34 ◼ ► I really don't. They can't put it on Disney Plus. It's, I think it's, if it's not an R,
00:16:39 ◼ ► it's a really hard PG-13. Like it's, it's a horror movie kind of superhero horror movie. But that's
00:16:45 ◼ ► the one that kind of baffles me because it's like, they did it with Hamilton's. Like I know this is a
00:16:48 ◼ ► superhero movie, but first off, it's not really a movie that anybody is dying to see. And it's from
00:16:53 ◼ ► the studio you bought and isn't there anymore, essentially. So I'm surprised that something like
00:16:58 ◼ ► that hasn't happened yet. But you are, I think the longer this goes and the longer the people in the
00:17:06 ◼ ► industry realize that the movie theaters in America aren't coming back this fall, the more you have to
00:17:12 ◼ ► think, is there another place we could put this? Yeah. Like I understand this, the argument,
00:17:17 ◼ ► right? Like of people like Nolan who really want their movies to be in cinemas. But you've got to
00:17:21 ◼ ► ask yourself the question of like, how much do you want your movie to not be seen? Like, what is the
00:17:27 ◼ ► length of time you're willing to go? Will you go six months? Will you go a year? I think Christopher
00:17:32 ◼ ► Nolan will say we'll wait a year if we have to. Yeah, I do think that he will say that. But then
00:17:36 ◼ ► I wonder about James Bond. Yep. That's a big movie that exists out in the world. Delayed for a year.
00:17:43 ◼ ► That's what everyone's going to want. And like, you can't keep pushing that James Bond, like
00:17:49 ◼ ► rock up the hill for too long. Because, you know, I think they've typically done well, but like,
00:17:56 ◼ ► has been, you know, the James Bond series has been mired in financial controversy for years now.
00:18:01 ◼ ► That probably cost a lot of money to make. And it just sitting there is not good. And you could have
00:18:07 ◼ ► an apple roll in and be like, you know, we'll give you X amount of money and give us it. And I
00:18:12 ◼ ► wouldn't be surprised to see James Bond go somewhere, honestly. Because... Yeah, weird,
00:18:18 ◼ ► strange times. But sure. I mean, you and I have advocated here for that's a possibility to just
00:18:22 ◼ ► buy James Bond, right? Like Apple. Yeah, buy the license. Buy MGM and EON and just make James Bond
00:18:32 ◼ ► into an Apple property or something. Like, I don't know. I mean, and again, the finances here are
00:18:37 ◼ ► complicated because movie box office is a huge part of the financial calculation of spending
00:18:42 ◼ ► money to make any movie that's intended for theaters. You get your home video, but you also
00:18:47 ◼ ► get your initial run box office. And the other way to go, we should say, is not to put it on your
00:18:53 ◼ ► streaming service. You put it on your streaming service as a way to build your subscriber base,
00:18:58 ◼ ► because over the long run, you make money because those people are paying you every month or every
00:19:01 ◼ ► year. The other way to go is to do pay-per-view, which they did with like Trolls World Tour,
00:19:06 ◼ ► I think, was done that way. And the idea there is you rent the movie using the existing rental
00:19:11 ◼ ► channels, but those initial run movies are super expensive. Think about how much a family of four
00:19:17 ◼ ► would spend going to a movie theater. That might be 30, 40 bucks. So you put the movie on rental
00:19:24 ◼ ► for 30 bucks or 25 bucks and you're like, $25 rental is ridiculous, but it's also sort of like,
00:19:29 ◼ ► well, yeah, but it's the brand new movie everybody wants to see. And then eventually it'll be
00:19:34 ◼ ► available somewhere else, but not for six months or a year. You're going to have to pay 25 if you
00:19:39 ◼ ► want to see it like that could happen. And that's a different way to go from what Disney did, which
00:19:44 ◼ ► is say, we're going to put Hamilton on our streaming service and the, in the end, it's going to be
00:19:49 ◼ ► worth it because it gets people to try Disney Plus. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by
00:19:54 ◼ ► Fully. Fully's workplace furniture is designed for health, flow, and balance. During these uncertain
00:20:00 ◼ ► times, Fully is helping people and businesses across the US, Canada, and Europe make the
00:20:09 ◼ ► manufactured office furniture. Fully is working hard to continue to ship free, direct, and next
00:20:15 ◼ ► day. So instead of feeling chained to your kitchen table or whatever makeshift workstation you set up,
00:20:20 ◼ ► create a space that helps you find your flow. I was talking to a friend about this a couple of
00:20:26 ◼ ► days ago that one of my big concerns for people at the moment is like, you know, people, lots of people
00:20:32 ◼ ► work from home and it's going great for them and they're doing well and like, yeah, I'm working from
00:20:36 ◼ ► the sofa, I'm working from my bed, I'm going okay. Ergonomic issues take time to kind of grow in you.
00:20:46 ◼ ► You know, like I was working in bad environment, like in bad like ergonomic environments for a while
00:20:51 ◼ ► and I was like, oh, this is fine. I can work from the sofa. Like when I started working from home
00:20:54 ◼ ► and it took like six months and I was like, oh no, this is bad. And then I had to like deal with
00:21:00 ◼ ► ergonomic issues and pains that I didn't have before because I didn't have the right setup,
00:21:05 ◼ ► didn't have the right environment. What I love about Fully's furniture, and we've got a bunch
00:21:09 ◼ ► of Fully products now, and I am like a very, very happy customer of Fully. They sent us a desk,
00:21:16 ◼ ► they sent us a chair, and I think we've bought three desks from Fully in total now to replace
00:21:21 ◼ ► some stuff that we had and also stuff from my studio because it's all great. It's all made of
00:21:26 ◼ ► wonderful materials and the instructions are really great to put them together. Like I'm a big, big
00:21:31 ◼ ► fan of their standing desks. It's just really, really excellent stuff. Fully have chairs that
00:21:36 ◼ ► encourage healthy sitting, both in posture and variability, and their products help to incorporate
00:21:42 ◼ ► movement into your days in order to keep blood flowing and minds engaged. Whether you're shopping
00:21:48 ◼ ► for yourself or your entire team, Fully is there for you. If you need help transitioning your team,
00:21:53 ◼ ► you can also feel free to give them a call. Take $30 off when you spend a minimum of $300
00:21:59 ◼ ► by going to Fully.com/upgrade. That's F-U-L-L-Y.com/upgrade. Fully, everything you need
00:22:08 ◼ ► to find your work flow. Our thanks to Fully for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.
00:22:39 ◼ ► Perfect, perfect for a podcast. Like last week, perfect sound on a podcast. And this week, images.
00:22:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I'll put links in the show notes too, if you want to get them at a higher resolution,
00:22:57 ◼ ► so you can really zoom in and see these icons in all of their glory. But we've put those together.
00:23:04 ◼ ► So if you do take a look, you'll see we have the new icons on the left and the icons that
00:23:09 ◼ ► they are replacing on the right. So I think, Jason, you put this together for us today.
00:23:26 ◼ ► Four rounds. First of good icons, then bad icons. Oh, a couple of rules, because there's always
00:23:34 ◼ ► rules. These icons, the only icons we're picking from must be on a stock install of macOS Big Sur.
00:23:42 ◼ ► No new icons for iWork and iLife. They don't count because I think we found out this morning
00:23:52 ◼ ► That's right. They're not there yet. Also, this is one of those drafts where you can't win.
00:24:15 ◼ ► And we should clarify, we're looking at the Applications folder and the Utilities folder.
00:24:23 ◼ ► So I spent a long time this morning getting all the Applications icons ready to go. And
00:24:27 ◼ ► then Steven said, "Wow, you should check out the Utilities folder." And I was like, "Oh, no."
00:25:05 ◼ ► And so now Otto is standing on what looks like some sort of floor with concentric circles coming
00:25:19 ◼ ► So the power of automation rippling out from his feet. And I think it looks fantastic because we
00:25:25 ◼ ► get some more depth like he's standing on this floor. It looks really nice. And they do a nice
00:25:29 ◼ ► gradient. So the top right-hand corner of the icon sort of fades to white. Yeah. Automator,
00:25:34 ◼ ► my first pick. I like this pick. I thought about putting this on my list. I couldn't help but think
00:25:40 ◼ ► also that when Apple finally decides that it's not going to support Automator and AppleScript
00:26:23 ◼ ► Okay. So here, follow me here. The new calculator looks a little bit like a cookie, I will admit.
00:26:43 ◼ ► It looks like a napkin with calculator printed on it. It's just this thin flimsy thing.
00:26:50 ◼ ► Or it looks like literally a screenshot that was turned at an angle. And somebody was like,
00:27:00 ◼ ► But the new one is like a little cute calculator widget, and it's adorable. And the old one is
00:27:05 ◼ ► super dumb, and I hate it. And every time I look at it, I get angry. And that's why I use Pcalc,
00:27:10 ◼ ► is what I'm saying. So I pick the new calculator. It's a cookie. It's adorable. You can pick those
00:27:39 ◼ ► I agree with you. The one before is flimsy and kind of lame, and I really don't like the new one.
00:28:24 ◼ ► Well, it's skeuomorphic, Myke, because in the past in America, because of our wide open spaces,
00:28:41 ◼ ► Honestly, for a minute there, I was completely on board. I thought you were telling me the truth
00:28:49 ◼ ► Look, I have a problem in general with this weird, especially thinking of younger people,
00:29:02 ◼ ► Like, I don't know why email is representative of an envelope and it still is and there's
00:29:06 ◼ ► nothing better we could do, but an envelope icon for email is way better than just a stamp.
00:29:18 ◼ ► I don't really love the weird kind of depth and the fact that they've written this very,
00:29:22 ◼ ► very small return address on the back that looks like a mistake unless you look very, very close.
00:29:38 ◼ ► Or a spam message, maybe. Like, you know, I don't know. The spam message of the moment,
00:29:44 ◼ ► you can come up with something. But I do agree that in looking at this next to the old one,
00:29:57 ◼ ► Also, I might tip my hand a little bit to some future pics, but I am a big fan of the visual
00:30:04 ◼ ► consistency of icons between Mac OS and iOS. I think that what Apple's doing here is a good thing
00:30:17 ◼ ► And so I think changing this email icon to the actual what we consider quote unquote email icon
00:30:25 ◼ ► is better. Like there are so many email apps that use envelopes or paper planes, right?
00:31:12 ◼ ► screwdriver, and it's got the C color sync logo sort of in the middle, but they've shrunk it down
00:31:18 ◼ ► and put it on like Myke, you said this consistent round rec background. And now that round rec
00:31:24 ◼ ► background has a gradient to it and the gradient matches up with the color inside the sea.
00:31:44 ◼ ► nondescript white icon round recs. They didn't do that here. They're like, oh, it's color.
00:32:01 ◼ ► And that's what you want from color sync utility and apps that almost nobody will ever open.
00:32:13 ◼ ► monitors and your printers and things and make sure that they all it's important technology
00:32:18 ◼ ► Is it like that stuff I always used to see advertised in like Mac world where you would
00:32:27 ◼ ► Apple even had a bunch of displays with color sync in the name where they did it from the
00:32:36 ◼ ► But again, most people don't ever open this. People don't know what it is. But I like that
00:32:59 ◼ ► looks like a stack, which I really like. I actually would love a stack of rounded rectangle
00:33:05 ◼ ► sticky notes. I think it looks really cool. Written on it with some sort of a marker are
00:33:12 ◼ ► the to do items, milk, eggs, and bread. I'd like to think that that's a reference to Remember
00:33:25 ◼ ► This is so okay, Myke, Myke, don't don't don't jump ahead here. The old icon had eggs and
00:33:35 ◼ ► So rest in peace, Lou. Don't call 555-7361. He's not there anymore. Anyway, in honor of
00:34:07 ◼ ► I like the stickies one too. Stickies is one of those applications that every year I think
00:34:28 ◼ ► or if it still feels incredibly old, which the answer is it does. And I had that thought,
00:34:38 ◼ ► people use stickies. They do. They use stickies instead of notes, which I think is weird,
00:34:42 ◼ ► but it's like, OK, well, then have an intern like add iCloud support to stickies or something
00:35:08 ◼ ► use it for myself because you could it would effectively work as this different layer to
00:35:14 ◼ ► the rest of the system. Right. So it's pretty much like a sticky note always in your face.
00:35:31 ◼ ► or they could add that functionality to notes. But I think it's telling that stickies just
00:35:36 ◼ ► continues to push along because and I know people do use it and maybe get Luda updated.
00:35:43 ◼ ► Well, I think stickies is one of those applications that Apple might be like scared to remove,
00:35:49 ◼ ► right, because they know like they'll be like a really strong vocal minority of people that
00:35:53 ◼ ► would get. Oh, yeah, there's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be a verge article by somebody on
00:35:56 ◼ ► the staff at the verge is like I use stickies every day to track all of my articles and now
00:36:01 ◼ ► Apple has ruined. It's a disaster. I lost my most recent draft because Apple removed stickies.
00:36:06 ◼ ► The outline would have written that article, but unfortunately I don't think they were there
00:36:10 ◼ ► around anymore. Is the outline still around? No. No. No. Okay. I don't think so. If they are,
00:36:19 ◼ ► see, I'm glad that this is the positive part. Everybody. This is the positive part of the draft.
00:36:23 ◼ ► Myke, what's your next good icon selection? Messages. Similar to my original argument for
00:36:30 ◼ ► mail. What I like about messages is that it's the same application on iOS and finally has the same
00:36:37 ◼ ► icon. I'm not really sure why messages stuck around with its name as messages, but had the
00:36:44 ◼ ► blue icon with the other little dot dot dot icon, which some could argue is maybe a better icon for
00:36:51 ◼ ► messages overall because green is funny because green is the green bubble friend. But nevertheless,
00:36:57 ◼ ► I am happy that messages is now consistent, but I actually also just do like the messages icon
00:37:04 ◼ ► on big Sur. I like the shading that they've done to it to make it really kind of stand out. So I'm
00:37:10 ◼ ► a big fan of the messages icon. I don't know whether I should list all the reasons why I
00:37:15 ◼ ► hate the messages icon here or just save it for the bad draft. Save it for the bad part.
00:37:24 ◼ ► you're not going to put it in your bad list and do it now, I'll save it. All right. Oh,
00:37:29 ◼ ► wow. Yeah. Little teaser for what's to come. I feel strongly about that one. So yes. Okay.
00:37:34 ◼ ► Back to Steven. Back to me. I am going to go with image capture as my next good pick. It retained
00:37:46 ◼ ► the digital camera. It looks like the same digital camera as before, but before it was sitting on
00:37:53 ◼ ► these black and white photos. It's like, which doesn't make any sense because you're scanning
00:37:57 ◼ ► them. It kind of looks like, is it like, are they emerging from it? Is it like a polaroid?
00:38:02 ◼ ► What is happening there? Oh yeah. And I think most people use image capture to scan as opposed to
00:38:08 ◼ ► inserting an SD card and pulling things off. So the new one does a couple of things. A,
00:38:20 ◼ ► red one circled as if you were looking at a sheet of negatives or something that you're scanning
00:38:29 ◼ ► So it keeps its slightly unusual shape, but I think it looks really nice. I really like what
00:38:35 ◼ ► they did with it. And I'm glad that image capture is still around because I scan stuff all the time.
00:38:40 ◼ ► I use image capture pretty frequently and I'm glad that it looks a little better now. I mean,
00:38:46 ◼ ► the app still looks bad. Like the app didn't change any, but it's got this fancy new icon
00:38:50 ◼ ► and I like the detail on this one a lot. This was on my list. There's something I do not like
00:38:55 ◼ ► about image capture, which is the little red circle around one of the images. What's how you
00:39:01 ◼ ► would like mark up a sheet of negatives? Like, Oh, I want this one in the newspaper today. Right.
00:39:05 ◼ ► But you were saying that this is good because it shows what it actually is rather than what
00:39:10 ◼ ► it is rather than pretending to be something it's not, which is printing. So you wouldn't
00:39:19 ◼ ► I don't know. It's the metaphor of it because you're selecting one and then you can, you can
00:39:22 ◼ ► import that one using image capture. I, this was on my list, Steven. I agree with you. I thought
00:39:27 ◼ ► this was a really good, not only is the new one pretty good, but the old one, the longer you look
00:39:33 ◼ ► at it, the more questions you have about what's happening. What I do like about this icon,
00:39:39 ◼ ► I don't dislike this icon. I find the red part weird, but I, what I like about this icon is
00:39:43 ◼ ► something I like about a lot of the big Sur icons is that they have the rounded rectangle,
00:39:48 ◼ ► but don't necessarily stay inside of it. I think that that's quite a nice touch for a lot of these
00:39:54 ◼ ► where there is the round rec and then there is some familiar part of it, which pokes out a little
00:39:59 ◼ ► bit. So like, I don't know if we mentioned this for automated, but Otto's head kind of point,
00:40:04 ◼ ► like pokes out at the top of the round right there too. So I like that where it's like,
00:40:08 ◼ ► we have this rounded rectangle, uh, some apps for some reason stay inside it too much, but a lot of
00:40:14 ◼ ► them pop out of the rounded rectangle with some kind of fun element. So that's, that is one of my
00:40:19 ◼ ► favorite things about some of the, the, uh, the icons in big Sur. And that keeps it Mac like where
00:40:26 ◼ ► you have icons of any shape really. And so it does keep it Mac like while bringing it mostly in line
00:40:34 ◼ ► with iOS. So yeah, I like that too. I think they've, they've had a nice distinction there
00:40:38 ◼ ► in this new design. All right. I'm going to make what apparently is a somewhat controversial choice,
00:40:46 ◼ ► but I have to make it, which is music. I'm going to choose the music app. Come on. And here's,
00:40:52 ◼ ► here's why. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I hear you. And here's what I say. The world is full of stupid
00:40:57 ◼ ► neutral background icons. I can't tell one icon from another. Now I know I can look at the red
00:41:04 ◼ ► icon with the big musical note in it. And I have my music app. Whereas before it's like, Oh,
00:41:09 ◼ ► which of the long list of white background or light gray gradient background icons can I choose?
00:41:16 ◼ ► Oh, there's this one. That's got the musical note with the super weird color gradient. And yes,
00:41:20 ◼ ► I can see those colors, uh, be gone, be gone. Uh, very simple, clear outline of the musical note,
00:41:27 ◼ ► uh, red background, instead of being confused with all the other white backgrounds. I like it.
00:41:31 ◼ ► I'm very happy that Apple has finally given us the, what essentially is the iOS nine icon for
00:41:37 ◼ ► music, uh, back. And now it's on the Mac too. It's great. I will save my points about this icon for a
00:41:44 ◼ ► little bit later on. I see what you're doing. It's fair. It's fair. Is it my turn now? It is. Text
00:41:52 ◼ ► edit. Do you know why I'm picking text at it? It has an incredibly detailed mechanical pencil,
00:41:58 ◼ ► uh, on the icon. It does. I was going to ask you separately about to comment cause there are two,
00:42:03 ◼ ► there's a mechanical pencil for text edit and there's a pen on the script editor utility.
00:42:08 ◼ ► And I was, I definitely want your thoughts about these, uh, these, uh, these devices. It didn't
00:42:14 ◼ ► really change much, Myke. I mean, it's, it's a little bit bigger, but like, I feel like out of
00:42:19 ◼ ► all the icons, like this one isn't a huge change. Like why the pencil now? Well, I, I wanted to just
00:42:24 ◼ ► say, uh, Jason, it's a mechanical pencil on both. It's just a different color. Oh, is it? Yeah. Oh,
00:42:29 ◼ ► I thought it was a pen. Oh, is it? Is it the same one? One is dark gray. Yeah. So what I'll say is
00:42:33 ◼ ► I will, I can tell you like definitely yes, the mechanical pencil is basically the same from
00:42:39 ◼ ► the, from version to version, but it has the same thing that I like about some of the other icons
00:42:45 ◼ ► where it's taken, I think a nice interpretation of a line piece of paper and made that the
00:42:51 ◼ ► rounded rack, and then the pencil kind of sticks out from the top and bottom. So I like the way
00:42:56 ◼ ► that this icon looks. I think it's not a huge difference, but an improvement that I like.
00:43:01 ◼ ► But I also just wanted to talk about the mechanical pencil a little bit that is featured
00:43:05 ◼ ► on both of these icons, uh, because I have some good points and I have some questions that I would
00:43:10 ◼ ► love somebody to answer. There's no rule against it, Steven. We have to let him do this. Yep. So
00:43:14 ◼ ► I know the grip is really cool. Clearly the pen is made out of some kind of metal. I'm just going
00:43:19 ◼ ► to assume aluminum because it probably makes the most sense here, although it's quite shiny. So,
00:43:23 ◼ ► you know, it could potentially be something like steel or titanium, but it also could just be
00:43:27 ◼ ► really nicely polished aluminum. So, you know, that's up to, up to them really. What I do like
00:43:32 ◼ ► is it has a knurled grip. So, you know, it has those little bumps. You can see the little bumps
00:43:36 ◼ ► if you zoom in that's called knurling when that, when it sticks out like that. I also really liked
00:43:41 ◼ ► the little detail of the stripes, the kind of strips, like the knurled strips that go down to
00:43:45 ◼ ► the end that would actually be very comfortable to hold. Um, I, I like that the one on a script
00:43:52 ◼ ► editor is black potentially that is a DLC coated like what they did to the Apple watch. That's my
00:43:58 ◼ ► own mental model for that one because it looks pretty nice. Uh, but the question I have is that
00:44:03 ◼ ► this looks like it would be a 0.7 pencil lead, which is a bold choice. That is a quite a thick
00:44:11 ◼ ► pencil lead that they've done there. It wouldn't be very good for writing. Um, so, you know,
00:44:16 ◼ ► either for the scribble that they did in script editing or for the text that are about to write
00:44:21 ◼ ► on text editor, it would be quite, quite chunky for, for a pencil. Uh, it's not necessarily what
00:44:26 ◼ ► I would recommend. I would say maybe 0.3 or 0.5 would have been a much better choice. Are you boys
00:44:31 ◼ ► still here or did you leave? Jason, did you go for tea? I'm regretting my choices, but I actually do
00:44:36 ◼ ► have an important note here that I want to mention, Myke, which is if you look where the clip is
00:44:40 ◼ ► compared to where the knurling is, you can see that Apple is cheating here. They've shrunk the length
00:44:45 ◼ ► of this pencil a lot between the old version and the new version. This is a stubby mechanical
00:44:50 ◼ ► pencil while the old one was a more traditionally sized, I would say, pencil. Do you have a problem
00:44:55 ◼ ► with that or do these exist or are they just cheating here? No, because what they've done,
00:44:59 ◼ ► they've made it smaller, which is fine, right? It's fine to have a smaller pencil, but they've
00:45:04 ◼ ► retained the ergonomics. They've kept the grip section the same size so it would still be
00:45:07 ◼ ► comfortable to hold in the hand. I can't believe I had a follow-up question about the pencil,
00:45:17 ◼ ► What is it? I've been sitting here thinking a lot about this when Myke was talking, and I am going
00:45:24 ◼ ► to go, I think it could be kind of between two, one that's controversial and one that's maybe not
00:45:32 ◼ ► as controversial. So which way? I'm going to give you all the choice. Should I go, should I create
00:45:37 ◼ ► controversy or should I play nice? Controversy. Yeah, I think the new preview icon is pretty
00:45:46 ◼ ► sweet. It's on my list too, Steven. I don't think that's controversial at all. I think there were
00:45:52 ◼ ► some tweets and stuff when this first showed up that people didn't like the side view of the
00:45:57 ◼ ► looking glass, a little magnification glass. But I really like it because if you zoom into it,
00:46:04 ◼ ► Apple distorts the image really nicely under it. And previously they were just zooming in,
00:46:10 ◼ ► you know, so you could see the corner of the photo better. It's one photo. It's another example of a
00:46:15 ◼ ► round rec with an item in front of it. And I tend to like that style. Like I like the bootcamp one
00:46:20 ◼ ► too. It's a similar type layout. But I like the new preview icon. I like the detail in it.
00:46:27 ◼ ► I like also that it looks like the same photo as in the old icon. So they brought that history
00:46:33 ◼ ► along with it, but again, have modernized it a bit for Big Sur. I don't know. I like it,
00:46:38 ◼ ► but I got a feeling some people don't. I like it. I like the loop that they're using there.
00:46:43 ◼ ► It does look a little more like a, I don't know, like an upside down shot glass or something than
00:46:48 ◼ ► the old loop, which was more cylindrical. This one kind of is tapered, but that's a perfectly
00:46:51 ◼ ► valid style for a loop to zoom in on something. I agree with you. I've been using, so on my laptop
00:46:59 ◼ ► that I've been using with Big Sur, I've had PDFs open in preview. And every time I look at the icon,
00:47:04 ◼ ► I'm like, "Oh, preview. You're different now." But I like you. I like it. Having lived with it,
00:47:09 ◼ ► I think it's good. I think it's simpler without losing any of the sort of flavor that was there
00:47:16 ◼ ► in the old one. And a stack of photos, again, having that photo be in the round rect with a
00:47:22 ◼ ► border, which is adorable, I think it's good. All right. I feel like this is turning into bad icons
00:47:29 ◼ ► in the last version and then bad icons in the next version, but that's what improvement is.
00:47:33 ◼ ► It's improving on something that was bad before. And so my choices now are, I could go to just sort
00:47:40 ◼ ► of general positivity or I could just, I'm going to slag off a bad old icon that's been put away,
00:47:44 ◼ ► and that's the Bluetooth file exchange icon. I don't know if anybody has looked in the utilities
00:47:52 ◼ ► folder at the Bluetooth file exchange icon, but that is some Bluetooth logo. It's huge.
00:47:59 ◼ ► It's white with a blue bevel or stroke applied to it that's kind of a gradient too. It's darker on
00:48:08 ◼ ► the bottom than the top. It looks like a space invader or something. It's coming to get you.
00:48:18 ◼ ► I looked at it for a while for this segment and I thought, every second I looked at it,
00:48:24 ◼ ► I hated it more and more. And the new one is so restrained. It's still the same. It's literally
00:48:29 ◼ ► the same Bluetooth logo. They didn't change the Bluetooth logo, but the edges of it are curved
00:48:34 ◼ ► now, not sharp. You can put an eye out with that thing. They're curved and they're just on a little
00:48:41 ◼ ► pleasant blue round rect. So blue for Bluetooth. That's great. It's just, it's restrained. It's
00:48:47 ◼ ► subtle. It's nice. And the old one is terrible. So I think just in the net benefit of the new
00:48:55 ◼ ► Bluetooth file exchange icon, another app that almost nobody's ever, ever, ever going to use,
00:48:59 ◼ ► but a thumbs up to the icon designer who smoothed out that awful Bluetooth logo and made it look
00:49:08 ◼ ► decent. The old one looks like it was an icon and the back of it fell off. So like the blue
00:49:14 ◼ ► is still upright, but the color fell back and there's like a shadow behind it. That's the
00:49:18 ◼ ► lore of the new one. They just fixed it. Oh yeah. They pushed it back. Well, yeah, but they smoothed
00:49:23 ◼ ► off. They took some sandpaper and they smoothed off. There was some damage. That Bluetooth icon
00:49:27 ◼ ► is so sharp in the old one that that's like a weapon that a Klingon would use or something.
00:49:31 ◼ ► It's very dangerous. So don't, don't, just don't upgrade. You just, just the safety alone of
00:49:37 ◼ ► upgrading to big Sur that you won't hurt yourself on the Bluetooth file exchange icon. It might be
00:49:41 ◼ ► enough to upgrade just there. I'm not really sure why the Bluetooth logo looks like that. Like,
00:49:48 ◼ ► why isn't it a tooth? Right? It's a bee. Well, it's a stylized bee. Yeah, but it's called Bluetooth.
00:49:54 ◼ ► It should have been a tooth. If you turn it 90 degrees clockwise, it kind of looks like pointy
00:49:59 ◼ ► teeth. Maybe. No. That's King Bluetooth's teeth. That's not enough for me. Some, uh, New Year's Eve,
00:50:06 ◼ ► we should all get little, uh, those, you know, that those, uh, glasses that were like for 2001
00:50:11 ◼ ► and 2009 and all that, we should get some Bluetooth glasses. For like the birthday of Bluetooth. And
00:50:16 ◼ ► be like, yay, happy new year, Bluetooth. Happy Bluetooth. Maybe on like an anniversary of the
00:50:21 ◼ ► Bluetooth creation. Sure. Little cardboard glasses. We'll, uh, send, we'll, we'll text each other
00:50:25 ◼ ► things using Bluetooth file exchange. It'd be great. I'm going to pick a weird one now,
00:50:31 ◼ ► I think, or at least one that most people would find boring, but I think is really good.
00:50:36 ◼ ► Launchpad. What is the, what is the old launchpad logo or icon all about? It's a rocket. All right.
00:50:44 ◼ ► So what do you use that application to take off into space? Use it to apps. Launching is itself
00:50:51 ◼ ► a metaphor for like your apps are going into space. I don't know, but that's the metaphor
00:50:56 ◼ ► is launchpad is a launchpad is where the rockets launch off from. Yeah, but that rocket's not on
00:51:02 ◼ ► the launchpad. That launchpad was a long time ago for that rocket. Just like when you launched an
00:51:07 ◼ ► app, the launchpad fades away. The rocket has pulled away from it. The new one looks like,
00:51:11 ◼ ► makes so much more sense because you know what it looks like a grid of app icons and that's what you
00:51:16 ◼ ► want it to be. Yes. You know what? You know what the Apple's operating systems need most of all is
00:51:22 ◼ ► a white background with a series of rainbow shapes on it. There are less white backgrounds now.
00:51:29 ◼ ► You just said that. No, there's less white backgrounds now. It's like how you loved your
00:51:34 ◼ ► terrible music icon because it got rid of the white background. They've lost their, uh,
00:51:38 ◼ ► there's some whimsy in the, in the metaphor that they've lost here. I see what your point,
00:51:42 ◼ ► the new one fits, I think much better, but it's on my bad list. Especially because launchpad
00:51:46 ◼ ► is surely going to become more important. I would expect like in the future with the, uh, like it
00:51:52 ◼ ► might actually not more important, important. It was never important. I think it might become
00:51:57 ◼ ► important with the, uh, with a lot of the changes that are coming to like with Apple Silicon and
00:52:02 ◼ ► launching iOS apps on the Mac. Like it could make more sense to do something with that. Maybe to like
00:52:09 ◼ ► make it better. Um, I think it's a better icon for what it is than launchpad was, which I think has
00:52:16 ◼ ► been, that has been consistent across my picks here is with the exclusion of text edits. Cause
00:52:23 ◼ ► I wanted to talk about mechanical pencil for a couple of minutes, because as I said at the
00:52:27 ◼ ► beginning, what I like about the changes to many of these icons is that they are adding more
00:52:33 ◼ ► consistency to people moving from device to device for where consistency is needed. So mail and
00:52:40 ◼ ► messages, they look like the mail and messages apps that, you know, launchpad is like, Oh,
00:52:44 ◼ ► that's where I get the apps from. Not this is where I set off a rocket from. It's literally,
00:52:50 ◼ ► it's very similar to the home screen icon that shows when you do command tab switching on the
00:52:56 ◼ ► iPad. It is. Yeah. That's a four by four and not a three by three, but they're very similar.
00:53:01 ◼ ► Therefore proving what I'm trying to say, which is like visual consistency makes sense when so much
00:53:08 ◼ ► of the operating system is visual consistency anyway. So I have a thumbs up for me from launchpad.
00:53:14 ◼ ► We can't stop you. Sorry, everybody. I guess. Upgradients. If you no longer want to hear any
00:53:20 ◼ ► ads on this show, like this ad while also getting extra content, you should sign up for upgrade. Plus
00:53:26 ◼ ► it's just $5 a month or $50 a year, and you'll get loads of other wonderful benefits just for
00:53:36 ◼ ► backstage infusion. You can get access to the relay FM members, discord, and so much more as
00:53:42 ◼ ► an upgrade plus supporter. As a relay FM member, you'll be supporting this show and becoming part
00:53:47 ◼ ► of the secret society of upgradients. You will get what I mean when you see the upgrade plus
00:53:57 ◼ ► you can sign up for $5 a month, but if you want the annual plan, you can also go to relay.fm/upgrade.
00:54:03 ◼ ► We've been really enjoying the additional content that we've been making for upgrade plus subscribers.
00:54:07 ◼ ► It's fun. It's relaxed, and it can allow us to be even more creative with the show on today's
00:54:18 ◼ ► And artificial intelligence has created titles and descriptions of shows. This is a wonderful
00:54:25 ◼ ► listener on upgrade in that put this together for us. We're going to be talking about some weird and
00:54:29 ◼ ► wonderful show ideas that come out of that AI. So to get this and so much more, become an upgrade
00:54:35 ◼ ► plus member today by going to get upgrade plus.com. Thank you so much for checking it out.
00:54:42 ◼ ► Get upgrade plus.com. All right, bad icon time. Bad icon time. Bad icon time. So what is the idea
00:54:51 ◼ ► behind bad icons? Is things that have gotten worse? Could it be just things we hate in general? What
00:54:57 ◼ ► is the situation here? What's the rules? Whatever you want it to mean. I think the last one was sort
00:55:01 ◼ ► of motivated by improvements versus the last one. And this one is going to be more on the on the
00:55:06 ◼ ► balance of either it was bad and it stayed bad or more likely it was, you know, it got worse
00:55:14 ◼ ► is sort of what I'm thinking. Okay. I feel like overall the utilities folder got bigger hits. Like
00:55:20 ◼ ► they're more bad ones and utilities in the applications folder. And that's where I'm going
00:55:25 ◼ ► to start. And I'm going to start with keychain access. Like color seek utility, it's the same
00:55:31 ◼ ► artwork as before, but now it's in a round rec background. And I looked at this background for
00:55:36 ◼ ► like 20 minutes trying to work out what it is and what I think it is. It's the role. No, I have
00:55:42 ◼ ► something even more specific. It's like the rolling door on a self storage unit. And it's all your
00:55:48 ◼ ► keys. Oh, that's even better. You know what? I don't keep my passwords in a self storage unit.
00:55:53 ◼ ► I don't want to keep them there. But you kind of do though, if you think about it, it's a storage
00:55:57 ◼ ► unit just for yourself. Like a, like a bed, like an office. I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't
00:56:03 ◼ ► like it. The orange is weird and I like orange. Uh, I just, I wish they had just done something
00:56:08 ◼ ► a little bit simpler here. Hmm. I, yeah, I don't entirely agree. Um, because I do like that
00:56:15 ◼ ► background. Um, I do. I had the same question as you about why it's textured the way it is,
00:56:20 ◼ ► but they have to add some sort of skeuomorphism. However, I will say just like you said about
00:56:24 ◼ ► automator, I think the trend to take these old Mac OS X icons from the ancient days when it was Mac
00:56:30 ◼ ► OS X and put them on backgrounds, put them on radrecks. I kind of like the trend because you
00:56:35 ◼ ► look at some of these icons long enough and you're like, it's just keys floating in space. And now
00:56:40 ◼ ► it's sort of keys in front of a, you know, a texture and a slightly blurry texture. I feel a
00:56:47 ◼ ► little less, uh, disconnected and like floating in a void and that makes me feel better. So, um,
00:56:53 ◼ ► but, but I, I get your point that that, that texture is maybe questionable. Um, I actually
00:56:59 ◼ ► was going to use your pick as an example of a better option than my pick, which is disc utility.
00:57:05 ◼ ► Where can I begin with disc utility? Uh, let's, let's begin with what they did to it. They, they,
00:57:12 ◼ ► they did redraw the stethoscope because let's remember the disc utility icon is a metal hard
00:57:18 ◼ ► drive with a stethoscope attached to it. So you can listen and see if it's got, you know,
00:57:26 ◼ ► breathing problems, I guess, I don't know. Or if it's pulse is fine. Uh, but that's the metaphor
00:57:30 ◼ ► and we'll go with it. Uh, what did they do? Well, they did redraw it. So the, uh, the little tube
00:57:35 ◼ ► that comes out of the, uh, the stethoscope goes in a different direction, but although I will give
00:57:43 ◼ ► them that, um, they just slapped it on a, on a white background with a metal embossed outline.
00:57:51 ◼ ► It is, it just seems so, I mean, it seems a little lazy and it also seems like they bypassed an
00:57:59 ◼ ► opportunity to do anything to make this icon more interesting because first off when it's small,
00:58:04 ◼ ► it's really hard to scan. The hard drive is not something most people even see and, uh,
00:58:09 ◼ ► they don't put them in most of their computers now. And, uh, and in the new one, the stethoscope
00:58:15 ◼ ► is posed dead center or slightly off center in the, in the round rect, which makes it look more
00:58:20 ◼ ► like, I don't know, a stethoscope, like a, a, a, a health app. I don't know what they're doing here.
00:58:31 ◼ ► see me on the paper and I'd be like, you need to do a better job. You need to do better work.
00:58:35 ◼ ► This isn't going to cut it. You need, I need to see a little more creativity out of you.
00:58:43 ◼ ► So the background of the key chain icon is actually the texture from the padlock that appears
00:58:52 ◼ ► in, uh, when you, when you're entering like, you know, you see the look for passwords in macOS,
00:58:58 ◼ ► that's actually a textured background on like, or like the, the, the, the lock itself has that
00:59:04 ◼ ► kind of like orange texture. So if you zoomed in far enough on that, you would actually see
00:59:14 ◼ ► lock they go into. I have more questions now. That's currently the case. If you look at any
00:59:27 ◼ ► I just wanted to say that our, our members of the discord are also theorizing what sort of
00:59:31 ◼ ► medical device that, uh, disc utility round, right. Could be stop. It's D it's none of them.
00:59:49 ◼ ► The music icon is the new one is mind numbingly boring. It is one of the most boring app icons
00:59:59 ◼ ► on the Mac now completely. What did they do? They just made a red icon and put and cut a music note
01:00:04 ◼ ► out of the middle of it. Like the music app has a visual like gradient, the old one, the blue
01:00:13 ◼ ► to pink. Why didn't they at least do the blue to pink? Why is it just all pink? It's so boring.
01:00:19 ◼ ► It's really boring. Like I would say the worst application, the worst icons in MacOS are the
01:00:26 ◼ ► ones where they made them boring. I have one that I'm going to pick shortly. This is one of the
01:00:31 ◼ ► worst offenders. They did it to iOS. They did it to MacOS. Like Apple music is a brand of its own.
01:00:38 ◼ ► And for some reason they've decided our brand is pink now. Like I don't get it. Like having
01:00:43 ◼ ► a gradient to it was so much nicer. If you're going to have like, they've regressed it so many
01:00:48 ◼ ► years. It's so boring. I hate this icon. It's boring and I don't like it. You know what I like
01:00:55 ◼ ► when I, when I'm listening to music is I like finding the app in order to launch it and then
01:00:59 ◼ ► being entertained by the music instead of the icon. Boom. Okay, Steven, go ahead. I don't know
01:01:04 ◼ ► how that argument you just made. It's like, it's good. It's the best one. No, no, no. It's so clear
01:01:13 ◼ ► that it doesn't even need to be an argument. It's destroyed. Whatever your thing is about being
01:01:17 ◼ ► entertained by an icon. Then the entire point of this draft is in question. Like if what we're
01:01:25 ◼ ► doing is just... I'm not entertained by disc utility. Well then we may as well just have all
01:01:29 ◼ ► icons just be the name of a thing. So like, you know, like this utility icon should just say disc
01:01:35 ◼ ► on it. Yeah. Great. Let's do that. That's not a good icon, is it? All right. I am going for now
01:01:43 ◼ ► to stay in the utilities folder and I want to talk about audio MIDI setup. The old icon,
01:01:50 ◼ ► basically a square keyboard, a little drop shadow. The new one is perhaps the laziest redesign in the
01:01:58 ◼ ► entirety of Big Sur. They put a cookie cutter of the new round rect, clipped the edges of the
01:02:04 ◼ ► keyboard to the point where if you zoom in the white keys on the outer side, like touch the edge
01:02:09 ◼ ► of the round rect, what they should have done is done... they could do this but shrink all the
01:02:14 ◼ ► artwork down a little bit so they kept a black border around it. This is one that someone took
01:02:19 ◼ ► eight seconds to do and then moved on. You know what? I've zoomed in on it quite a lot. Enhance!
01:02:24 ◼ ► And what I think makes it worse is it does look like it has been redrawn. Like if you look at the
01:02:30 ◼ ► little window, like the little like readout screen on the inside, they've changed the shadow on it.
01:02:35 ◼ ► The sliders on the left have changed. So that kind of makes it worse that somebody did spend time on
01:02:40 ◼ ► this but the piano keys touch the edges of the icon. That's not good. That is worse. I didn't
01:02:47 ◼ ► want to zoom too closely into it because I didn't want to accidentally punch my display. Okay.
01:03:00 ◼ ► I'm picking all of the icons that put a round peg in a square hole, specifically Siri, Safari,
01:03:08 ◼ ► and Time Machine as examples, where you have a concept that is round. The original concept is
01:03:14 ◼ ► something that is round. And then somebody in your... you're an icon designer and you're like,
01:03:19 ◼ ► "I got the round icons down. We're good. We got round icons." And then somebody's like,
01:03:22 ◼ ► "Guess what? Round rects. We're going to do that now. Now everything is a squared circle.
01:03:28 ◼ ► Go." And you're like, "But Time Machine is a circle that moves in a circle. But the Safari is a
01:03:35 ◼ ► compass. They don't make square compasses." But, you know, Siri, we have, in fact, we have the
01:03:43 ◼ ► little Siri circle. And in iOS 14, when you activate Siri, you just see the little circle.
01:03:49 ◼ ► It doesn't matter. Put it in a square. And so you've got a series of these just like really
01:03:55 ◼ ► bad icons that are meant to be circles, and now they're circles inside squares. And it's just
01:04:02 ◼ ► really sad because this is the downside of having this concept is you have things that were naturally
01:04:10 ◼ ► circles and all they can really do. You can see it. Look at Safari and Siri. You can see the
01:04:15 ◼ ► designer be like, "All right, I guess I'll just shrink it down and then put a thing behind it."
01:04:20 ◼ ► And then, I mean, job's done. You can knock off early and go home. They were probably already at
01:04:26 ◼ ► home. Anyway, I don't like it. I think it's a mistake to get the consistency part, but it just
01:04:33 ◼ ► makes these icons seem sad. It is weird. Again, I know Safari now looks like the iOS icon, which
01:04:40 ◼ ► I've said I'm happy with. I'm happy in most instances with that. But it's strange to see
01:04:45 ◼ ► which applications got to do something fun and which didn't. In my mind, the little Safari
01:04:51 ◼ ► compass should live in the bottom right-hand corner and it be in front of something else.
01:04:55 ◼ ► The round rack could be something that looks like a web page or something like that. It's peculiar
01:05:02 ◼ ► to drop some of those things in the way that they are. And then some applications like Image Capture
01:05:08 ◼ ► really get to break the boundaries when Safari is arguably without actually... Safari is a much more
01:05:14 ◼ ► important application, which people will see and click on more often. I get the consistency with
01:05:21 ◼ ► iOS, but I look at it and I think, "Okay, you probably don't want to make a square compass wheel,
01:05:27 ◼ ► right? Because it's a circular item." But you could, I mean, am I wrong in saying maybe it
01:05:33 ◼ ► should be a little skeuomorphic? Maybe the Safari icon, if it has to be in a round-rect, maybe the
01:05:37 ◼ ► idea is that the round-rect is like the thing that the compass wheel goes in and it's part of the
01:05:43 ◼ ► physical object. But here it's just on a white to gray gradient and it's laying there with nothing.
01:05:48 ◼ ► It doesn't even have a shadow or anything. It's got maybe a very light stroke around it.
01:05:54 ◼ ► Extremely subtle. It could have been cool to make it look like a compass, right? Like that's the
01:06:00 ◼ ► part you hold on to or something. Right. But they didn't do that. They punted on this one and they
01:06:07 ◼ ► basically said, "We'll just make it like it is an iOS." And I think if the goal here is to have these,
01:06:11 ◼ ► I mean, they said in their PR richer icons to take advantage of the Mac, I think they missed
01:06:15 ◼ ► an opportunity with a lot of these where they just took a circle and put it on a square and called it
01:06:20 ◼ ► good. And I think they're, I despise all of them just because I think they need to try harder.
01:06:44 ◼ ► it's way too shadowy. It looks really not good at small sizes. It's too dark. There's like too much
01:06:53 ◼ ► darkness in the middle because they've put so many gears in. Like it's aggressively shadowy.
01:07:00 ◼ ► So at large sizes, you see the detail, but when you shrink it down, you do not see that detail
01:07:05 ◼ ► anymore and it gets kind of muddy. And so that's why I actually think that this icon is a worse
01:07:14 ◼ ► Yeah, I agree with you. I like how it looks, but at small sizes, the simple one, I mean,
01:07:24 ◼ ► that's the fact of it is that the old icon on the Mac was designed for smaller sizes and it's very
01:07:29 ◼ ► clear. It's one big gear with a little, it's got a little like a little screw in the center and then
01:07:34 ◼ ► it's got the two gears that are kind of coming in from the side and you get the sense of what it's
01:07:38 ◼ ► doing and you can scan it at a glance. And then the new one, I think is a beautiful icon. Although,
01:07:45 ◼ ► you know, again, the teeth of that outside ring aren't attached to anything, which is kind of
01:07:49 ◼ ► weird. It's just these concentric circles. I'm not sure it works mechanically, but on top of that,
01:07:54 ◼ ► I don't think it scans as well at smaller sizes. And, you know, I don't know about you guys,
01:08:09 ◼ ► No, I don't know about you, but I do have system preferences in my dock. And so when I've been
01:08:13 ◼ ► using Big Sur, I really don't like how it looks in the dark, which is a shame to me. Because when I
01:08:18 ◼ ► saw it for the first time, I was like, "Oh, that looks like a nice icon." But then as soon as I,
01:08:23 ◼ ► what, like as soon as I started putting other apps in my dock, it got progressively worse.
01:08:27 ◼ ► And now just looks like this tiny little gray abyss that sits in my dock, which I'm not a fan of.
01:08:37 ◼ ► I agree with you that the new icon isn't as good as the old one. But my big problem with system
01:08:43 ◼ ► preferences, and it's true in Catalina and Big Sur, is that for the software update one,
01:08:47 ◼ ► they use the same icon. So you go to system preferences and it itself uses its own icon
01:08:58 ◼ ► it'll be in the show notes too, is that Apple has a better software update icon available to it.
01:09:04 ◼ ► It's still in the system in core services. It's this blue little aqua globe. Apple used to use
01:09:11 ◼ ► this to like signify networking or the internet. And it has twisty arrows around it. And I think
01:09:16 ◼ ► it's a great icon. I think they can modernize it in this way and stick it in system preferences.
01:09:28 ◼ ► That is weird. I've never, I don't think, I don't know why I hadn't noticed that before now.
01:09:33 ◼ ► That's just like on the current one, it's just the circular part without the box around it.
01:09:38 ◼ ► Very weird. I'm up next. And I am going to, I'm going to follow in Jason's footsteps. And I'm
01:09:44 ◼ ► going to say book icons are all bad. Font book, books, contacts, and dictionary. Now three of the
01:10:03 ◼ ► font book, generally looked the same with, you know, kind of their own flavor. Books was in a
01:10:09 ◼ ► circle, whatever. But now they've all been again, hole punched like the midi setup into these round
01:10:16 ◼ ► wrecks. And I don't know about you, but do you have any books? No book is shaped like this.
01:10:26 ◼ ► font book and contacts have little like tabs on the side, which is not, that's fine. I guess
01:10:33 ◼ ► dictionary has a tiny little bookmark, which looks really stupid. These are bad. They're all bad.
01:10:38 ◼ ► Books are not shaped this way, Apple. Please move on. I have a couple other notes here. One is that
01:10:45 ◼ ► like the dictionary you can see in the old version is actually thick. Whereas the new ones, who knows,
01:10:52 ◼ ► they look like little novelty gifts you'd give at Christmas where it's like, oh, it's a notepad with
01:10:57 ◼ ► like 10 pages in it. It's not, they have no depth. Although the dictionary does get a little bookmark,
01:11:05 ◼ ► which is something. I do want to observe a few things that I do think are positives about this
01:11:12 ◼ ► design. Cause I agree with you. I think books in general are bad. I laugh when I look at the old
01:11:17 ◼ ► dictionary icons. Books are great. Books are the paper. I will say books are bad. All right. Yeah,
01:11:24 ◼ ► the books icons in a big Sur are bad, but I did laugh. Cause if you look at that dictionary icon
01:11:29 ◼ ► again, sometimes you don't look at these icons and not at this level. And then you stare at them and
01:11:34 ◼ ► you think, well, wait a second. So I laugh at the ineptitude of the design of the old dictionary
01:11:39 ◼ ► book itself, because it has big text at the top that says dictionary in case you didn't know from
01:11:46 ◼ ► the label below it that it's the dictionary app. Don't you like it when applications tell you exactly
01:11:51 ◼ ► what they are. Yeah. Um, through song imagery, not through actually writing the words on there.
01:11:59 ◼ ► And the other thing that I will, I will applaud them for is font book. What I like about font book
01:12:04 ◼ ► is that it's got the little, instead of a big F with some circles around it, which is sort of like,
01:12:09 ◼ ► you know, it's a font building kind of Bezier kind of thing going on there. Instead the new font book
01:12:14 ◼ ► has like a sans serif a, and then they've got a seraph a, and I think there's a slab seraph,
01:12:20 ◼ ► and they've got like a little handwriting EA. And so it's four A's of different styles of font. And
01:12:25 ◼ ► I actually think that's a better way to convey what font book is, but it's in this little, uh,
01:12:31 ◼ ► little cake. Well, it's like, I like, I think, agree that like the, the, the A's of font book
01:12:38 ◼ ► are a better way of showing that, but it doesn't look good. Like that's my problem with it. It's
01:12:45 ◼ ► like whatever they've chosen or what, it just doesn't look very nice. Like the four A's stacked
01:12:51 ◼ ► on top of each other like that, while I do agree that it is a better way to show what it is.
01:13:00 ◼ ► rec isn't one that keeps getting to me, but I'm going to go, I'm going to use my time here to,
01:13:05 ◼ ► uh, bag on Myke's messages icon. Um, I, okay. Broadly, I think it's a mistake for Apple to
01:13:16 ◼ ► continue to use green as the messages icon, which I, because I message is blue, blue is good.
01:13:22 ◼ ► Green is bad. You don't want green bubbles. You want blue bubbles and they made green their icon.
01:13:28 ◼ ► So I think that's baked into it with big Sur. Apple is taking the blue messages icon that shows
01:13:34 ◼ ► a speech bubble and then another bubble with the ellipsis in it. Like they're typing, which is
01:13:38 ◼ ► a perfect encapsulation of what messages is. And they're throwing that away and replacing it with
01:13:45 ◼ ► this green round rec with a single speech bubble on it. And then there's the worst part for me,
01:13:52 ◼ ► which is there's a big drop shadow below it. It's it's super rendered, which at high, I mean,
01:13:59 ◼ ► I don't love it. Talk about your hidden cakes, Myke. I think that speech bubble is a cake. Okay.
01:14:04 ◼ ► I think it's a cake. It's so arched and like, uh, so you can see that level of detail when you
01:14:11 ◼ ► zoom in. But when it's living in your doc, what I find is it looks dirty. It looks muddy. The speech
01:14:17 ◼ ► bubble ends up being kind of like hard to pick out. The contrast isn't great. And then the green,
01:14:21 ◼ ► the potentially bright green rec round rec behind it. It's also now muddy because there's a shadow
01:14:27 ◼ ► gradient on the background plus the actual gradient of the round rec. So you get like the
01:14:32 ◼ ► bottom half of the rectangle is muddy and it looks just kind of like, like it's smudged and I want to
01:14:37 ◼ ► clean it up. You know, I do agree with that. I don't. And this is like a similar thing that
01:14:42 ◼ ► is in system preferences. Like the darkness, like the small sizes of these icons is a problem. And
01:14:48 ◼ ► that that problem does exist in messages too. I don't have, I don't disagree with the points
01:14:53 ◼ ► that you're making, but like the original point I was making is messages should be consistent
01:14:58 ◼ ► because it's important. I agree with that. Uh, but, but I think they should have changed iOS
01:15:03 ◼ ► to be blue rather than change Mac to be green. I never really thought about it until I stared
01:15:08 ◼ ► at this icon, but the Mac messages icon in Catalina, it's a good icon. I like having the two
01:15:14 ◼ ► bubbles and the little three dots. It's like, yeah, that's actually what happens in that app.
01:15:19 ◼ ► I like it. I, I, I'm very sad that they've decided to just lift the iOS icon, which is inferior
01:15:26 ◼ ► in concept to rather than taking the Mac icon. So, Oh, well, I wonder if, if part of this sort
01:15:33 ◼ ► of darkness shadow issue is that people, or even by default, the doc icons are pretty big.
01:15:39 ◼ ► And those of us who may use it on the side or have a lot of icons, they do get smaller and maybe
01:15:45 ◼ ► Apple is erring on the side of big doc icons. I have to say that one thing they could do and they
01:15:52 ◼ ► clearly aren't doing is you can make different icons at different sizes that are a little bit
01:15:57 ◼ ► different, right? They could drop some of the shadow off at small sizes to make it more readable,
01:16:01 ◼ ► but they don't do that. So I don't know. I don't know. Myke, it's your choice for a bad one.
01:16:07 ◼ ► Myke: I'm not going to cheat like my friends here and pick like seven applications at once.
01:16:22 ◼ ► would be one of them. They took the existing home icon, which is the stacked house effect,
01:16:30 ◼ ► which gets lighter for every stack, which is a fine icon for home. I have no problem with that.
01:16:36 ◼ ► No, no, let me stop you there because I know where you're going with this. And I agree with
01:16:39 ◼ ► everything you're about to say, but I just want to pause for a moment and consider the home icon
01:16:42 ◼ ► in general because it's terrible. I think it's terrible. It is like a home with a bunch of little
01:16:48 ◼ ► raised kind of home-ish shapes that turns into like a home plate at the end for baseball or
01:16:52 ◼ ► something. And it is, it's the gradient going in. I think it's ugly. I don't like it. I think it's
01:16:58 ◼ ► dumb. I don't have a lot of words here other than to say, I think it's a bad ugly icon. And then
01:17:03 ◼ ► what they did with it is nothing. Well, they slightly, it looks like they slightly tilted
01:17:09 ◼ ► it away maybe. Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's just a shadow, but they just took it, shrunk it down,
01:17:14 ◼ ► put it in a white square, put a shadow around it and called it done. Uh, no, I'm not, I'm not up on
01:17:19 ◼ ► this one. Like I don't like this one. It's not good. It's super lazy. Like it might be one of
01:17:26 ◼ ► the laziest icons in macOS. They just shrunk it down and put it in a white round rack. And then
01:17:33 ◼ ► that was it. Like at least with Safari, it looks like they did some work to the compass, right?
01:17:39 ◼ ► Like they changed the compass a bit, you know, like they, they changed the shading and stuff
01:17:44 ◼ ► like that inside of the blue. Like they did some stuff there. They really just did nothing with
01:17:49 ◼ ► home. They're just like, there you go. Now, Myke, it's going to sound like I'm trolling you here
01:17:53 ◼ ► about, about the music's icon, but I'm really not. I, I I'm dead serious. It would be a better
01:17:58 ◼ ► home icon if it, if it had a background of some kind and then cut into it was the silhouette of
01:18:05 ◼ ► a house. I would agree with you in this case, because I don't think a stack of items on top
01:18:10 ◼ ► of a house is necessary to get across that this is the home app, right? The home silhouette does it.
01:18:17 ◼ ► So why don't you use the home silhouette and then maybe this, you know, one of the, one of the
01:18:22 ◼ ► colors from this gradient and say, that's the color of the home app and do it like that and cut that
01:18:27 ◼ ► either cut that out of the white background or have that be the background and have it have a
01:18:30 ◼ ► white cutout rather than this, uh, lazy abomination. Lost picks. I can't believe mine is still here.
01:18:39 ◼ ► I can't either, honestly. QuickTime Player. Now this is one where Apple wasn't playing from a
01:18:46 ◼ ► position of strength. The old QuickTime Player, which I think showed up in, when did they, when
01:18:50 ◼ ► did they go to QuickTime Player 10? Do you remember, Jason? It's a long time ago now. It's been years.
01:18:55 ◼ ► Yeah. And they did this like goofy black to gray gradient with the Q logo. And then there's a blue
01:19:02 ◼ ► gradient, which goes like the opposite direction inside of it. Very strange. And all they did,
01:19:09 ◼ ► this is like the home app. They stuck it in a round rack. There's a slight blue gradient to
01:19:14 ◼ ► the round rack. So we have three gradients. We have the background is dark blue to slightly
01:19:18 ◼ ► lighter blue bottom to top inside the Q it's the background gradient, but all darker going the
01:19:26 ◼ ► other way. And then the Q itself is still gradient. In fact, maybe even a more noticeable gradient.
01:19:32 ◼ ► Now it looks like you're looking texture. It looks like if you put a trashcan Mac pro down inside an
01:19:39 ◼ ► aquarium and look down upon it, that's kind of what it looks like. And it has the same problem.
01:19:46 ◼ ► The mini player has where it's too close to the edges, a little pointy bit at the end of the, the
01:19:51 ◼ ► little part of the queue that comes out. I'm sure that has a name. I'm sorry. It's like almost to
01:19:57 ◼ ► the edge. Many of my problems with these that are set into round Rex is they all need to be a little
01:20:02 ◼ ► bit smaller. Airport utility has the same problem. It's too close to the edges. Cooked on player is
01:20:07 ◼ ► bad. Too many blues pick a blue stick with it. Too many gradients makes me, makes me upset.
01:20:13 ◼ ► I actually have a broader point here, which is this quick time player, which the chat room
01:20:19 ◼ ► says was in snow leopard when they did this. Okay. Remember what they did here was they made a new
01:20:24 ◼ ► quick time thing that didn't use any of the quick time API APIs. And then last year they
01:20:29 ◼ ► deprecated the old quick time and it went away completely. So you couldn't use the old quick
01:20:34 ◼ ► time editor at all. You could only use this new quick time player. So they're saddled with the
01:20:38 ◼ ► old quick time icon, which has been around since before Steve jobs came back. Okay. It's a 90s,
01:20:43 ◼ ► 90s. It's a 90s technology that they've deprecated now. And it's a 90s icon. So I'm going to make
01:20:48 ◼ ► a modest proposal maybe for next year. I think Apple needs to get rid of the quick time brand.
01:20:54 ◼ ► It's from the 90s. It's dead. It's gone. There's no quick time left. All it is is a media player.
01:21:00 ◼ ► Why don't they call it something like media player given a new boring, but informative icon and walk
01:21:06 ◼ ► away because as much as I loved quick time and spent lots of hours in the quick time editor and
01:21:11 ◼ ► the quick time player and all of that, it's over. So maybe just embrace that it's over, put it to
01:21:16 ◼ ► bed and you could get a better icon out of it because they are struggling with how to represent
01:21:21 ◼ ► this icon from the 90s in a modern way. And my only other statement here, Steven, is that on top
01:21:27 ◼ ► of all of that, and it does look like a Mac pro a little bit, but I prefer to think of it as a
01:21:30 ◼ ► cookie cutter. It looks like a cookie cutter to me, like at Christmas, you know, you get your Santa
01:21:35 ◼ ► and you get your reindeer and you get your quick time icon cookies and you can, you can make those.
01:21:39 ◼ ► So enjoy who doesn't love Q-shaped. It's the reason for the season. Quick time is, come on.
01:21:45 ◼ ► Oh boy. It's my turn now. Now you've taken a lot of my good ones. I'm going to go with a,
01:21:53 ◼ ► a little, well, they're all nitpicky, nitpicky one, which is terminal. I use terminal all the
01:22:01 ◼ ► time, all the time. Terminal is a great app. And this is one of those cases again, where the it's
01:22:05 ◼ ► the tyranny of the round rect because the old terminal icon, although small and a little bit
01:22:11 ◼ ► squished, it's kind of, it's a terminal prompt in a four by three ish sized window, like an iPad ish
01:22:19 ◼ ► sized window. And the new one it's a terminal prompt in a round rect. Terminals aren't shaped
01:22:26 ◼ ► that way. Like you could do it, but you would be just a bad person to do it that way. Like,
01:22:31 ◼ ► that's not how it works. And it really bothers me every time I launched terminal in big Sur,
01:22:36 ◼ ► I think, no, no, the terminal is not square. The terminal isn't shaped like that. It's got to be
01:22:42 ◼ ► wider. It's got to, that's how people use it. So if you're going to represent a terminal, this feels
01:22:47 ◼ ► like a bad idea. Also, this would be a great opportunity to do something a little more fun
01:22:51 ◼ ► and skeuomorphic where it's a, a more old style compute terminal inside a shape. Like it's a,
01:22:59 ◼ ► almost like it's a, a CRT maybe or something like that where it feels old. I think they've also
01:23:04 ◼ ► missed the opportunity to add some color to this. All my terminals are a bright green on black
01:23:09 ◼ ► background. It's fun. It feels very old and they've lost that here or that they missed the opportunity
01:23:15 ◼ ► for that. And I know that this is a minor thing, but like the bottom line is not everything is a
01:23:21 ◼ ► round rect and by putting it in a round rect, they've, they've disappointed me. That's what
01:23:26 ◼ ► I'm saying. Console I think has the same problem, right? Like the same thing happened. The text is
01:23:33 ◼ ► now a little bit smaller. I will say though, I think this treatment works for activity monitor.
01:23:38 ◼ ► I kind of like activity monitor look going from looking like an iPad to an Apple watch,
01:23:42 ◼ ► like those shapes, but yeah, console and terminal feel like siblings that got the same punishment.
01:23:48 ◼ ► Also in my head Canon for Apple icons, the activity monitor is the readout of what you're
01:23:53 ◼ ► hearing through the stethoscope in disc utility. If your hard drive sounds like a heartbeat,
01:24:00 ◼ ► you've lost all your data. Also, we haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm just as an aside,
01:24:04 ◼ ► since we're talking about medical things, I can't look at digital color meter without thinking that
01:24:09 ◼ ► some kind of CSI and it's a thing full of blood. That's okay. It's blood. There's blood in there
01:24:14 ◼ ► people. That's not a digital color meter. If it is, they're measuring the color of the blood they
01:24:18 ◼ ► found at the crime scene. The gradient on digital color meter is better than the gradient on music.
01:24:23 ◼ ► I agree. Just saying. It's just been mentioned, but my final pick is console for similar reasons
01:24:30 ◼ ► to JSON. So it's basically just, they took the old one and they put it in a round break and
01:24:35 ◼ ► put a silver border around the outside. And it's not as good, right? But the main issue I have is
01:24:40 ◼ ► just like, I don't like that console icon at all. So it says, "Warning" with no G and then A, 736.
01:24:56 ◼ ► that's why console's there. It's to read the warnings. But I can't read the warning. It's
01:25:06 ◼ ► It's the icon that says, "This is literally an app where there's a bunch of text in it."
01:25:10 ◼ ► And so we're just going to put a bunch of text in it. Yay. Don't open this. It's full of warnings.
01:25:14 ◼ ► I don't want it. If you keep it closed, the warnings go away and you never have to deal
01:25:19 ◼ ► with it. That's not super true. A, 736. A, 736. A, A. Can we talk about Finder? I know it's not
01:25:28 ◼ ► in these. It's in the migration assistant. I find Finder clipped into a round-frect. A,
01:25:37 ◼ ► Do you? What do you think, Jason? It makes me uncomfortable because now the Finder is a cake,
01:25:59 ◼ ► better to me. It's just like a little friend. It fits. I don't hate it. It's just, it's so,
01:26:05 ◼ ► so this icon, I mean, QuickTime is probably older or I don't know, it's close. This icon
01:26:11 ◼ ► is from the 90s, too. And they've redrawn it. But, like, this has been, the Finder is the old
01:26:16 ◼ ► Mac OS icon going way back. So it's a classic. I'm glad it's still with us. It's actually one of
01:26:24 ◼ ► those ones that I'm surprised Apple hasn't done something terrible to it. And if getting it to
01:26:30 ◼ ► fit by making it a round-rect is what they need to do, I'm okay with it. I don't, I mean, they
01:26:35 ◼ ► didn't put it in with a white background. They didn't put a, like, a silver border around it.
01:26:40 ◼ ► They didn't add a stethoscope. They didn't do any of that. So that's good. While we're here,
01:26:44 ◼ ► the App Store icon's terrible. I had that on my list. That was gonna be, I mean, when you're here,
01:26:49 ◼ ► you're family. Enjoy your unlimited breadsticks because it's the beveled, I mean, I don't like the
01:26:55 ◼ ► App Store icon anyway, 'cause it's the letter A spelled out with what was originally, like,
01:27:00 ◼ ► a pen and stuff because it's for, you know, it's like productivity for applications. And at this
01:27:05 ◼ ► point- Please do not send us the pictures of the three app icons, like, stacked. Like, I get it,
01:27:12 ◼ ► right? Like, it's three app icons on a side, but they'll cut weirdly, which doesn't make any sense.
01:27:18 ◼ ► They wouldn't do that. Like, and it's got too much shadow and it just looks like hot dogs more than
01:27:29 ◼ ► Think of it this way. Those are breadsticks that are gonna go into the oven. You've got a little
01:27:33 ◼ ► blue tray and you're gonna pop that into your toaster oven and then, again, when you're here,
01:27:38 ◼ ► you're family. I thought there were no trays. I wouldn't get there from Disk Utility that there's
01:27:43 ◼ ► no trays in any of these. No trays. They left no trays. I think Apple missed an opportunity with
01:27:49 ◼ ► system information. It's the calipers picking up what is a very old-school style chip. Like,
01:27:56 ◼ ► chips don't look like that anymore. I think they could have really redone that and put an Apple
01:28:01 ◼ ► silicon chip in there, but they didn't. And by the way, talk about your lazy icon. That feels
01:28:11 ◼ ► with the calipers. But the doctor, fortunately, that is a tool that is in the doctor's- So,
01:28:16 ◼ ► I'm building up the story here, right? So, the doctor comes, he's got a black bag, his stethoscope
01:28:20 ◼ ► is in it. He listens to the hard drive. He gets the activity monitor information out of there,
01:28:24 ◼ ► and then he needs to measure something. So, out of his little leather bag, he pulls the calipers,
01:28:28 ◼ ► his old-timey calipers, to measure, I don't know, how big the hard drive is or something like that.
01:28:39 ◼ ► I think that the automator could be the doctor. Because he's a little robot computer doctor.
01:29:09 ◼ ► If you want more wild stuff, you can find me on Connected with Myke and Federico on Wednesdays.
01:29:15 ◼ ► And then every Sunday, I am on Mac Power Users with David Sparks, and every other Tuesday with
01:29:21 ◼ ► Jason on Liftoff. Yeah. And this just in, Dr. Otto is the one who pronounced Lou dead. So,
01:29:34 ◼ ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by PDF Pen from our friends at Smile. PDF Pen and PDF
01:29:39 ◼ ► Pen Pro is your ultimate PDF viewing and editing app for the Mac. You can add headers and footers,
01:29:46 ◼ ► along with watermarks to your documents, and it also includes a precision edit tool. Plus,
01:29:51 ◼ ► you can OCR documents and edit content in table cells. This is really powerful and awesome stuff.
01:29:57 ◼ ► PDF Pen and PDF Pen Pro 12.1 have arrived with even more powerful features, including page label
01:30:04 ◼ ► support in multiple formats for documents, and Pro users can go a step farther with their ability to
01:30:09 ◼ ► add or edit those page labels. These new features are in addition to the great features available
01:30:15 ◼ ► in PDF Pen 12 that include a magnifier window to zoom in on a document to see things up close,
01:30:20 ◼ ► customizable compression settings, stationary with new paper colors from custom page designs,
01:30:26 ◼ ► and PDF Pen 12 works with PDF Pen for iPad and iPhone, allowing seamless editing across devices
01:30:33 ◼ ► when used at Dropbox or iCloud. I am a huge fan of PDF Pen. I use it on all of my devices. It's one
01:30:39 ◼ ► of the really pivotal tools to help me get my work done. If you do any work with PDF Pen, then you
01:30:45 ◼ ► need PDF Pen. Go to smallsoftware.com/podcast. Our thanks to PDF Pen for their support of this show
01:30:52 ◼ ► and Relay FM. It is time for some #AskUpgrade questions. Back to lasers from our icon sounds.
01:31:01 ◼ ► I've got an icon on the brain now. Too many icons from our Big Sur sounds last week. We have a
01:31:08 ◼ ► question from Jason, which is not you, but Jason, you have the answer. Jason asks, "I'm a cord cutter
01:31:13 ◼ ► and I love MLB TV, but it's completely undercut by local blackouts. What will it take for them to get
01:31:19 ◼ ► rid of the archaic local blackout restrictions?" All right, so let me explain what's happening with
01:31:24 ◼ ► Major League Baseball's streaming service. The idea here is if you're in a local market, you can't see
01:31:30 ◼ ► the games from your team in your local market. And the whole product exists and was built on the idea
01:31:37 ◼ ► that it's letting you see baseball games from other parts of the country, but not your local market.
01:31:42 ◼ ► Why is that? The answer is that Major League Baseball sells the rights to your local team,
01:31:50 ◼ ► or the local team sell those rights, to essentially a channel in your local market that's making a lot
01:31:57 ◼ ► of money by being on a cable or satellite system. And there's a huge amount of money to be made
01:32:01 ◼ ► there. Plus, those contracts have become enormous. Like the one in LA, it's tens of billions of
01:32:07 ◼ ► dollars because the cable companies know that one of the ways to stop people from cutting the cord
01:32:15 ◼ ► is to put live sports on their channels, and then you're kind of stuck. That's why they make the
01:32:22 ◼ ► money they do. And as a result, a lot of people will say, "Well, why can't I just spend $100 or
01:32:26 ◼ ► whatever for MLB TV and skip my local games?" And the fact is, because somebody else paid way more
01:32:32 ◼ ► than that, and you would need to pay way more than that to get your local games. Now, the good news
01:32:37 ◼ ► is if you're a cord cutter, you can get those local games, but you have to use an over-the-top
01:32:41 ◼ ► service. You have to use YouTube TV or Hulu Plus or one of those things. You've got to use a live
01:32:46 ◼ ► TV service, at which point you're paying like $60 a month, which is a lot, even if it's for four,
01:32:52 ◼ ► six months of a normal baseball season. So it stinks, but a lot of people think, "Well,
01:32:59 ◼ ► why can't I just spend $100 and get my local team?" And the answer is because they want you
01:33:03 ◼ ► to spend way more money than that. And the people who sold the rights sold it to somebody who wants
01:33:08 ◼ ► you to spend that money and knows you'll spend that money. So eventually, right now you can do
01:33:14 ◼ ► it, but you have to buy an over-the-top service. Eventually, they might offer it direct, but it's
01:33:18 ◼ ► not going to be part of the main package. It's going to be a very expensive add-on when it
01:33:23 ◼ ► happens. So that's part of it. I think Jason's question is a little more broad because one of
01:33:28 ◼ ► the challenges about these blackouts is that what they define as a local market is bogus and
01:33:34 ◼ ► includes lots of markets that can't actually see the games on traditional TV. There's an area in
01:33:40 ◼ ► Iowa that's got like eight teams that claim it's their local market. When I go to Hawaii,
01:33:46 ◼ ► all the California teams, I think, are the local market in Hawaii, but you can't actually watch
01:33:51 ◼ ► the games in Hawaii. They aren't on in Hawaii, and you can't stream them. So Jason's question is,
01:34:00 ◼ ► "What will it take?" I don't know. I don't know why they haven't changed it already. It would
01:34:03 ◼ ► actually open up a lot of opportunity for Major League Baseball to serve those fans, and I don't
01:34:08 ◼ ► believe it's realistic that the teams are saying, "Well, yeah, but the cable company in Iowa could
01:34:14 ◼ ► put our games on TV." They just don't. It's a little bit silly. I mean, and it's not reasonable
01:34:20 ◼ ► for them to do that. So there needs to be reform for the territories because that will allow fans
01:34:27 ◼ ► who can't see the games any other way to find a way to pay to see them. But the larger issue,
01:34:32 ◼ ► which is, "Why can't I just, as a person who wants to follow my local baseball team, pay $100 a year
01:34:39 ◼ ► or $120 a year to see them?" The answer is, because somebody else paid a lot of money to get you to
01:34:46 ◼ ► buy cable or an over-the-top service. And that's just, it's the money. The money is the answer.
01:34:51 ◼ ► It's not, the MLB TV exists, it was created as a way to get everything else, but not steal the
01:34:59 ◼ ► money from your local team that gets a huge amount of money from the cable company, essentially,
01:35:04 ◼ ► to put their games on cable. So that's where we are. It's a little upstream-esque upgrade.
01:35:15 ◼ ► if you're in a local area, you want to watch your team, right? And if there should be a way...
01:35:21 ◼ ► Right, yeah. And wanting to watch your local team, though, has a value that is way beyond
01:35:25 ◼ ► the value of a service that's for superfans like me, who wants to see any other game they want.
01:35:32 ◼ ► Like, the local team has a much greater value. And that's the trick, is people see the,
01:35:38 ◼ ► people see this package for $120 and think, "Oh, that includes my local team," and then they get
01:35:44 ◼ ► disappointed when it doesn't. But I assure you, if it included your local team, it wouldn't be
01:35:50 ◼ ► $120 for six months. It would be $360 or $300, or it would be a lot more. And you know what?
01:35:59 ◼ ► That would be nice if they would offer it, but the fact is, what you do if you are a cord cutter
01:36:05 ◼ ► and you really want your local team is, for the months that your team is in season, get YouTube
01:36:10 ◼ ► TV or Hulu Plus with live TV or one of the other, or Sling, right? You get one of the over-the-top
01:36:16 ◼ ► providers that has your local cable channel that shows those games and then cancel when the season
01:36:21 ◼ ► is over. And I know that that's going to be $50 or $60 a month, and that stinks, but, like,
01:36:25 ◼ ► that's basically the price you would pay anyway if they offered it inside of Major League Baseball's
01:36:30 ◼ ► app. Nepali asks, "With our Macs running iOS apps in the future, do you think that a potential
01:36:37 ◼ ► convertible Mac could show the iOS-only apps within almost springboard-like UI in tablet mode?"
01:36:44 ◼ ► So there's a lot here, right? We spoke in the past about the potential for a convertible Mac,
01:37:03 ◼ ► the iOS-based applications because you're, you know, not using the keyboard or the mouse
01:37:11 ◼ ► anymore because it's now effectively like a tablet? Depends on how Apple implemented this,
01:37:16 ◼ ► right? I think my gut feeling is you would just tap on that beautiful set of colored squares on
01:37:25 ◼ ► a white background that is the launchpad icon. Exactly. Imagine, right? And then swipe through
01:37:31 ◼ ► those because that essentially is the springboard interface on the Mac. Would they—I think it's an
01:37:37 ◼ ► interesting question of, like, would Apple make some affordances for a touch-only interface if a
01:37:42 ◼ ► Mac that has touch and is convertible, if you fold the keyboard around the back, is it smart enough
01:37:48 ◼ ► to say, "Oh, you know, you don't have another keyboard or mouse attached, and so I'm going to
01:37:53 ◼ ► go into a more touch-friendly mode"? I don't know. It feels like that's not Apple's style, but maybe.
01:37:59 ◼ ► Again, I think it's more likely that Apple would, you know, have some sort of affordance like
01:38:10 ◼ ► but you can put it in your dock and tap on it, and then you've got an app launcher that you can use
01:38:14 ◼ ► that you aren't dealing with a finder. I do wonder about, like, multi-touch gestures in a scenario
01:38:19 ◼ ► like that. Would they let me, like, do expose with finger gestures or go to the desktop or
01:38:25 ◼ ► something like that? I don't know. It gets real weird real fast, which is why I think if you bet
01:38:31 ◼ ► on a convertible laptop at all, I think it would take a lot of steps to get something that rich,
01:38:36 ◼ ► and that they would probably start with something much simpler that's basically—it's a Mac,
01:38:46 ◼ ► using your fingers. Yeah, I think if we do—and I do believe we will get touchscreen Macs at
01:38:51 ◼ ► some point—but if we do, I don't think convertible is the first form factor. I think there's a lot of
01:38:56 ◼ ► steps between now and convertible Mac when it comes to how macOS works and operates that would
01:39:02 ◼ ► need to be considered. You know, like, would you put a software keyboard on the Mac? Right?
01:39:09 ◼ ► Like, don't know. You could. You could. You could. But would you? Yeah. And I think that's—and that
01:39:15 ◼ ► is where we start to get into the stuff that Microsoft has grappled with, right? And I'm not
01:39:19 ◼ ► sure if Apple wants to go there or not, but they could. It could. Like, if I'm in a tablet mode and
01:39:26 ◼ ► I'm running an iOS app, would you not want to slide up a software keyboard at that point?
01:39:30 ◼ ► And Marlies asks, "What upcoming or rumored new technology are you most excited about right now?"
01:39:40 ◼ ► So I'll say for me, Jason, while you get your brain working on some future tech over there,
01:39:46 ◼ ► uh, this isn't necessarily future tech for the phone industry at large, but for an iPhone use
01:39:53 ◼ ► case or for an iPhone user, I'm looking forward to high refresh rate displays. ProMotion display
01:39:58 ◼ ► on my iPhone, I feel like it's got to be this year and I'm very much excited about that. And as you
01:40:04 ◼ ► would expect, I am still quite bullish, as Tim would say, on foldable display technology. I think
01:40:10 ◼ ► we're still at the very beginning of that. I still think that there's interesting things that could
01:40:13 ◼ ► happen. Like, I'm really intrigued to see, like, tablets as an idea. Like, what would you do if you
01:40:20 ◼ ► looked at a tablet being foldable? Yeah, I think there's still some stuff there that I want to see,
01:40:28 ◼ ► Uh, for me, it's Face ID on Macs and desktop Macs in particular. Like, the more I use, um,
01:40:41 ◼ ► on, uh, on the Mac because I have an iMac. So I think that Face ID tech, which would also come
01:40:52 ◼ ► All right, that is it for this episode of Upgrade. If you would like to send in a question for a
01:40:58 ◼ ► future episode, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade or use the question mark
01:41:03 ◼ ► #AskUpgrade command in the Relay FM members Discord. Don't forget, you can go to getupgradeplus.com
01:41:09 ◼ ► to become an Upgrade Plus member and you'll get access to that Discord. If you want to find Jason
01:41:14 ◼ ► online, you can go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell, J S N E double L. Uh, Jason, are you
01:41:20 ◼ ► going to be doing any coverage of the earnings report? Oh, you know it charts, charts, charts,
01:41:25 ◼ ► whoo! I love them charts over at sixcolors.com and you'll be tweeting, will you be doing live tweets?
01:41:37 ◼ ► is that uh Six Colors Live? Is that the Twitter account? Uh, Six Colors Event. Six Colors Event.
01:41:42 ◼ ► I'll put that in the show notes for people if they want to follow that account. It's a good account to
01:41:47 ◼ ► get all of the great tidbits. I like it for that. I save so many tweets from that account to my notes
01:41:54 ◼ ► application to talk about on the show because you get all the good tidbits from there. Um, if you
01:41:59 ◼ ► want to find me online, I'm @imike, I am Y K E. Thank you so much to Fully and PDFPEM from Smile
01:42:06 ◼ ► for their support of the show and uh we'll be back. Oh, and thanks to Stephen Hackett for
01:42:11 ◼ ► joining us as well. Yeah, that wild segment. I hope that you enjoyed it. Uh, still a summer