00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 239. Today's show is brought to you by Borrow, Hello, and Pingdom.
00:00:17 ◼ ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by somebody else. It's not Jason. Haha, no, April Fools. It is Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.
00:00:34 ◼ ► Hashtag Snow Talk question this week comes from Seth and Seth wants to know, Jason, do you know how many author pictures or photos you've written under
00:00:47 ◼ ► I haven't counted. I had a couple in high school or no, in college where literally the photo editor would take new photos of everybody every year
00:00:55 ◼ ► because they wanted them to be their perfect art. I still got a couple of those kicking around.
00:01:00 ◼ ► I got a picture taken when I was an intern at Mac User to be mentioned in the column once by the editor-in-chief.
00:01:09 ◼ ► And then as editor-in-chief of Mac World when I was writing my column there, I had a column photo and I don't remember.
00:01:20 ◼ ► I think at some point, like they took my column photo and at some point they wanted to have all the column photos matched so they took another column photo
00:01:28 ◼ ► and then at some point I think the art director or photographer decided that they didn't like that one so then I had to go to the photographer's studio
00:01:34 ◼ ► and take another column photo. I used that for a while. In my non-professional, post-professional, whatever it is, magazine life now that I just am on the internet,
00:01:43 ◼ ► sometimes I use pictures of me that I find acceptable. I used a picture that John Gruber took of me at WWDC for a while.
00:01:52 ◼ ► I used a picture that Sean Blanc took of me at WWDC for a while. And I'm currently on Twitter, I'm using an illustration.
00:02:01 ◼ ► The OOL conference drew little pictures of all the speakers and it's their illustration of me.
00:02:08 ◼ ► Although I was thinking just the other day that I'm almost ready to replace that with a real photo.
00:02:13 ◼ ► And same for on Six Colors, in the newsletter I have a picture of myself and that's changed and it really is just like what do I have that looks decent that's fairly recent.
00:02:27 ◼ ► I'm currently using one that I took at a conference, that somebody took of me at a conference. It's what prompts me to change them. I get tired of them or I don't think they resemble me anymore. That's basically the reason.
00:02:42 ◼ ► I mostly change my avatars when something has changed about me. I'm looking at getting new glasses soon so I'll be looking to replace my avatar at some point after that.
00:02:54 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question, like Seth did, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk. It can be about anything to help us open the show.
00:03:01 ◼ ► And we start with some follow up/follow out. WWDC is coming and Relay FM is going to be doing their live show. We're going to be doing an episode of Connected on Wednesday June 5th.
00:03:13 ◼ ► Tickets are still on sale but there really aren't many left. It will be sold out pretty soon so I would recommend people go to the link in the show notes. It's the first link in the show notes. It's got some flashing lights around it so you won't miss it.
00:03:29 ◼ ► We're really excited. We're going to be doing our show again at the Hammer Theatre which is my favourite venue that we've done anything in because it's a real theatre. It's a wonderful place. It is a block away from the convention centre.
00:03:44 ◼ ► It's near the Fairmont Hotel and stuff if you know where that is in San Jose. So it's going to be on Wednesday June 5th. You won't want to miss the show. We had a great time putting it on last year and we're working hard on making a really fun and exciting show for you. So that's Wednesday June 5th.
00:04:01 ◼ ► I'd like to make a couple announcements related to that. One is I would like to be the first to announce that I will be at that event.
00:04:12 ◼ ► If you want to see me, I'll probably be in the first row. I'll probably not be on stage but you never know.
00:04:16 ◼ ► And then also Dan Morin and I are possibly going to do a live performance of the Six Colour Secret podcast that week.
00:04:23 ◼ ► If we do, it will be on a bench somewhere but we're hoping to have a live studio audience this time.
00:04:37 ◼ ► I also have another announcement that's not related to WWDC which is next week's episode, episode 240, you, Myke, are missing big milestone episode 240.
00:05:00 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm going to be at the Atlanta Pen Show. So that's a big thing with the pen addict. We do it every year.
00:05:06 ◼ ► And I'm going to be on a plane on my way home on Monday. So Jason's going to be doing one of his famed guest episodes.
00:05:12 ◼ ► It's the rare upgrade where you didn't delay and sit an entire extra day in a city in order to do upgrade.
00:05:20 ◼ ► So that's happened many times where you've sat in a city on a Monday and flown on a Tuesday. But not this time.
00:05:28 ◼ ► So I will have a mystery guest. I say that because I actually haven't asked anyone to be on that episode yet.
00:05:47 ◼ ► Also, I wanted to do a little bit of a follow-up from our episodes a year ago at this time,
00:05:53 ◼ ► which is that you'll be excited to know, Myke, they're going to roll the baseballs out from behind the gate.
00:05:59 ◼ ► It's Friday because it's opening day, and alas, you won't be here next week, so we won't be able to repeat our confusion where I try to explain how baseball works to you.
00:06:12 ◼ ► But that's -- anyway, the gate is ready. It's locked, and the baseballs have been placed behind it, and they will open the gate to reveal the baseballs on Friday afternoon, weather permitting.
00:06:36 ◼ ► Did we post that on Twitter or put it in a B-side or something? It was the "How does baseball work?" and "It doesn't work the way Myke thinks it works."
00:06:45 ◼ ► But I have been to a baseball game with you, and you didn't catch a foul ball. A foul ball landed near you, and you picked it up.
00:07:09 ◼ ► So remember when we were talking about the IMAX Pro gap, which is this idea that I think a bunch of us have had, which is now that the new IMAX has been announced?
00:07:17 ◼ ► And before that, last year, when the IMAX and the IMAX Pro were being compared, and there was this question of, like, do you get a high-end IMAX? Do you get a low-end IMAX Pro?
00:07:30 ◼ ► Stephen Hackett obviously grappled with this, and he got the high-end IMAX, and then he was so turned off by how often the fan blew on it, because it's—and presumably it's getting throttled, too, right?
00:07:42 ◼ ► The processors are heating up, and they get really hot, and the fan blows and tries to do as much as it can, and then at some point the system has to just kind of, like, dial it back, because it doesn't want to melt your processor.
00:07:54 ◼ ► And so Stephen ended up getting frustrated by the, I think primarily the fan noise, and returned it and got a Mac Pro—an IMAX Pro instead.
00:08:04 ◼ ► So this is the gap. I am happy to report that I am literally sitting in the IMAX Pro gap right now.
00:08:11 ◼ ► I have the base model IMAX Pro in front of me, and the top-of-the-line, build-to-order i9 iMac behind me, a review unit sent by Apple, which I've been testing.
00:08:29 ◼ ► But very interesting. There's also—some other people are testing this stuff and have come up with something.
00:08:35 ◼ ► Stephen actually sent me a link to this video from Max Tech that's suggesting definitely that something is different about this iMac than the previous generation iMac.
00:08:46 ◼ ► And it's unclear what it is. They haven't redesigned the cooling system, but it looks like some combination maybe of firmware in terms of, like, the fan control and the curve at which the fan kicks in.
00:09:02 ◼ ► Maybe there's something about how the Intel processor is handling the heat that it is throwing off and how it switches when it does turbo boost and goes really fast.
00:09:13 ◼ ► But that video is interesting because the guy in the Max Tech video found that—we'll call him Max—Max found—
00:09:21 ◼ ► It's Max Tech, yeah, right? Well, Tech could be, like, his middle name. He could be, like, Max Tech's Johnson.
00:09:27 ◼ ► But either way, Max found that the fan took a while to ramp up. It wasn't nearly as easy to get the fan to blow.
00:09:37 ◼ ► And that the processor got close to the turbo boost max speed, although not quite. There's still some thermal throttling going on.
00:09:47 ◼ ► In my test, I found something—and I'm still kind of processing what I'm looking at here—
00:09:53 ◼ ► but it seems to me that a lot of the third-party benchmarks that are used on these systems are not necessarily, like, optimized to how a Pro Mac works with the Xeon processors and the T2 and all the things that are in the iMac Pro.
00:10:11 ◼ ► Not too surprising because it's an outlier, right? Like, only these Mac Pros and iMac Pros have Xeon processors. Only the iMac Pro has the T2.
00:10:20 ◼ ► What makes me say this, though, is that I ran a bunch of tests where the top-of-the-line i9 iMac is as fast or faster than the base model iMac Pro.
00:10:39 ◼ ► So it's in the ballpark of the $5,000 iMac Pro, but it's still surprising to me that it scored the same or better than the iMac Pro, even though it is, yes, it's a year newer computer.
00:10:52 ◼ ► But what really kind of blew me away is that I did a bunch of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro tests as well, and the iMac Pro is better in all of them, by a bit.
00:11:04 ◼ ► And what that suggests to me is that maybe only dedicated Pro apps and maybe only from Apple are really trying to eke out the most performance from the Xeons and the way that the Pro Mac is built,
00:11:22 ◼ ► in a way that maybe everybody else is just not concerned because that's such a niche product.
00:11:29 ◼ ► I don't know, but it was really striking that like, "Oh, these computers are about the same," or maybe the new iMac is a little faster.
00:11:42 ◼ ► And it's fascinating. So it's interesting to watch. I will say that people who don't want to spend $5,000 on an iMac Pro can basically,
00:11:54 ◼ ► There are disadvantages in buying an iMac over an iMac Pro. The cooling system is better. There are a bunch of other things about it.
00:12:01 ◼ ► It's got the ECC RAM. The storage is faster, I believe. It's got the T2, which the other iMac does not have.
00:12:08 ◼ ► So in terms of Mac generations, it's basically still kind of old tech compared to the iMac Pro, which is what a modern Mac looks like.
00:12:19 ◼ ► But it is interesting to look at this thing and see just how much power is in that ninth generation i9 processor model.
00:12:28 ◼ ► You've got to pay a lot for it, but it is pretty impressive. So anyway, that's my report from inside the iMac Pro gap.
00:12:42 ◼ ► Which one you should get? Do you feel any clearer about which you would recommend to somebody than you did before?
00:12:51 ◼ ► My gut feeling right now is that it's actually sort of the same argument that I would make before for the iMac Pro,
00:13:11 ◼ ► And the iMac Pro, it's better to think of it as like it starts at the $5,000 model and then it shoots way up from there.
00:13:16 ◼ ► So you really need to be somebody who is trying to get just enormous amounts of performance,
00:13:22 ◼ ► because if you just want a fast iMac, the regular iMac is as fast as you need it to be, essentially.
00:13:34 ◼ ► It does seem like maybe this new iMac isn't as noisy. Its fan characteristics aren't as aggressive, maybe, as the old version was.
00:13:44 ◼ ► I don't know. But the iMac Pro, I mean, Apple's not kidding when it says this is a pro system, use it with Pro apps.
00:13:52 ◼ ► And it seems like that Final Cut and Logic are really better optimized for it than some other software,
00:14:07 ◼ ► You could argue that they're building these systems with that pro applications group that they've got now,
00:14:17 ◼ ► It's apps like Final Cut and Logic and probably some other hand-picked apps that they deem pro,
00:14:27 ◼ ► Yeah, or I guess the other part of it is knowing if the exact applications that you want to use are working better on the iMac Pro.
00:14:37 ◼ ► Because you were saying, in some cases, depending on the application or depending on the process,
00:14:46 ◼ ► But if you're using what seems to be, as you say, the optimized software that Apple is somehow optimizing the iMac Pro for, then it's better.
00:14:57 ◼ ► If your applications of choice are really going to give you that much of a boost on the pro line.
00:15:02 ◼ ► And the bottom line is that most of the things that most people do are not aggressively multi-threaded, multi-processor,
00:15:19 ◼ ► And yes, the high-end iMac is like that too, but the truth is that for a lot of people,
00:15:25 ◼ ► these faster configurations aren't really that much faster because they're trading single core speed, to a certain extent,
00:15:37 ◼ ► And if you use apps, like I use the denoiser in iZotope is multi-core, heavy multi-core,
00:15:44 ◼ ► and that's why I bought the iMac Pro, and I just was denoising four hour long Dungeons & Dragons files this weekend, lots of them.
00:15:51 ◼ ► And they are enormous files, and it just filled up the cores and cranked through those files.
00:15:58 ◼ ► And then there are other pro plugins, even iZotope plugins, that are single core and they are slow.
00:16:05 ◼ ► And on systems that have a faster single core performance, they would actually be faster on a different computer.
00:16:11 ◼ ► So the truth is that for a lot of people, this whole, we're optimizing to push as far into multi-core power as possible,
00:16:19 ◼ ► isn't right for you, because you're probably not ever or very rarely in a situation like that.
00:16:30 ◼ ► because that will get you more GPU, which could be good if you're doing graphics stuff, including games.
00:16:38 ◼ ► No, it's interesting. They're different computers, and so the new iMac is in some ways more advanced, because it's newer,
00:16:50 ◼ ► It's built for a spinning drive, even if you replace that with an SSD, that's what it was built for.
00:16:57 ◼ ► It is 2012 or whatever conception of what an iMac is, whereas the iMac Pro is really a late 2017 perception
00:17:09 ◼ ► I also just wanted to talk about one very quick thing for an upstream streaming media segment today,
00:17:18 ◼ ► which is just to close out the loop of Disney and 21st Century Fox, because the acquisition's complete now.
00:17:36 ◼ ► They took the 30% of Hulu that Fox had, and now have 60% total of Hulu, and the television group.
00:17:43 ◼ ► But this is like the comedy and drama type stuff, so it's like the television production company,
00:17:49 ◼ ► because Fox News, sports, and broadcast TV will remain with a kind of new Fox corporation that's being established.
00:17:57 ◼ ► Yes, they were called New Fox for a while, although now I think they're back to becoming 20th Century Fox,
00:18:04 ◼ ► And also, in the U.S., it's very confusing. The Fox network, the broadcast network, is owned by them,
00:18:11 ◼ ► but most of the shows on that network are produced by the Fox studio, which is owned by Disney.
00:18:26 ◼ ► And with this deal closing, it means that the Fox network's shows are all, not all, but mostly supplied by a company owned by Disney now.
00:18:38 ◼ ► And over time, that will probably lead to the Fox broadcast network being really different,
00:18:42 ◼ ► where they're going to dump a lot of scripted stuff and go to reality and sports and other things that they produce themselves or with partners.
00:19:04 ◼ ► And as I always like to point out, just kind of as a refresher, what did Disney get here?
00:19:09 ◼ ► I mean, they got a lot of stuff, but some of the key things, they got The Simpsons now.
00:19:20 ◼ ► And Disney have actually confirmed that movies like Deadpool, which have a more adult bent, will continue to be made.
00:19:40 ◼ ► Are they going to put more adult, like would they do a Deadpool movie and have it be tied into the Marvel universe?
00:19:49 ◼ ► But yeah, it's an enormous amount. I had a moment the other day where I realised that my favourite TV show of all time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that was a Fox-produced show.
00:19:59 ◼ ► And so Disney owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer now, too. There are so many, like it's huge amounts of intellectual property that they own now.
00:20:05 ◼ ► Now everyone can ramp up the speculation that Firefly will finally come back, because they also own the rights to that.
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00:22:08 ◼ ► So AirPower. AirPower is gone Jason. We're in the blink of an eye. We never got to meet AirPower and AirPower has been cancelled by Apple.
00:22:18 ◼ ► Yeah AirPower after and I guess hashtag Myke was right. I mean after all of this time waiting for a product that was shown in September 2017 and then nothing just rumors.
00:22:31 ◼ ► Apple did your your classic move which is the Friday afternoon news dump on a Friday afternoon.
00:22:38 ◼ ► They announced via statements to like Matt Panzerino at TechCrunch and some other places like yeah, we're gonna not make that product.
00:22:47 ◼ ► And then they ran away as if nothing had ever happened. Look over there. They said and then they as the person turned they ran the other direction the end.
00:22:55 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah, that's basically what happened. So Dan Riccio who is the SVP of Hardware Engineering was put his name was put to this.
00:23:03 ◼ ► He was the he was the name at the end of all of the PR statements that were handed out to come there to publications like TechCrunch at the statement is this after much effort.
00:23:12 ◼ ► We've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch.
00:23:20 ◼ ► We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward.
00:23:25 ◼ ► And as you mentioned it was first shown off in September 2017 and it had this weird life of showing up in random places over that period of time.
00:23:33 ◼ ► So it's been hidden in images on the website. It keeps showing up in packaging materials.
00:23:43 ◼ ► I okay. So this is this is unprecedented in some ways. But I mean there was I hate to say where there's smoke there's fire.
00:23:55 ◼ ► I heard about it. It has been going around like the rumors have been that they had severe problems with the thing they thought they were going to ship.
00:24:06 ◼ ► And not like it doesn't work. But like again, I said this on this podcast before like rumor through the grapevine of like it's overheated.
00:24:22 ◼ ► And I think Apple think it's interesting. I think Apple is not going to ship something that goes person to flames some percentage of the time.
00:24:29 ◼ ► Anyway, we've already talked about the scale many times about, you know, even a point one percent problem is magnified by the volume of anything that Apple ships.
00:24:47 ◼ ► Like boy, you really don't want to be put in a position where you release a product that burst into flames or that that, you know, overheats and does, you know, basically bad things.
00:24:58 ◼ ► And so I'm not surprised because we heard about it. It is, however, surprising that Apple announced a product that they that wasn't far enough, you know, there wasn't ready that they announced it.
00:25:11 ◼ ► Like I get when you when Apple announces a product well in advance because it's a brand new product.
00:25:18 ◼ ► And so it's, you know, the Apple watch was like that the iPod was like that the iPhone was like that.
00:25:23 ◼ ► I get that that sometimes you announce a product and there's some degree of nervousness there like that iPhone that I got to try the day it was announced six months before it shipped.
00:25:36 ◼ ► And it like was missing apps and barely, you know, barely worked. But some of it worked like they had some confidence that they were going to be able to get it done.
00:25:43 ◼ ► But you're taking a risk. You're talking about the original iPhone there, right? The original iPhone.
00:25:47 ◼ ► Yeah, the first iPhone. But with something like air power, it's like why? Why? I guess I guess what happened is they had they had, as it turns out, misplaced confidence that they could ship this product.
00:26:08 ◼ ► And they really wanted to take, you know, have an Apple spin on Qi charging because the big feature that they were unveiling in September of 2017 and the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10 was wireless charging.
00:26:24 ◼ ► And so rather than just saying we've got third parties, they wanted to have like an Apple charger.
00:26:29 ◼ ► And in fact, makes me wonder if maybe originally it was supposed to be like the Apple charger was going to be right there and they weren't going to even talk about the Qi chargers.
00:26:36 ◼ ► But that changed perhaps even before they got on stage where it was like, oh, it's compatible with all these things and our thing is coming.
00:26:44 ◼ ► And that like maybe just because they wanted to have this big picture, you know, of wireless charging, it made them lean into a product that somewhere along the line maybe had been questioned.
00:26:56 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't know whether they made that decision thinking, oh, it's fine. It's coming out.
00:27:00 ◼ ► Whether they're like, well, yeah, it's not as far along as we'd like, but we're still going to announce it because it's a good story to tell.
00:27:07 ◼ ► And that's the part that surprises me, honestly, is like, I'm surprised that Apple seemed that this thing got through to the point where it was on stage, given that it wasn't, that it didn't work.
00:27:19 ◼ ► Like it wasn't done. And is that because there was this misplaced confidence that it works?
00:27:27 ◼ ► I hate to bring up the term, but let's just put it out there, which is I think there's a degree of arrogance in this, right?
00:27:34 ◼ ► Which is when you look at that statement on stage, it's like Apple has rethought how to do wireless charging.
00:27:39 ◼ ► And we're going to share our largesse with the Qi charging standards body as well, because we've really figured this whole thing out.
00:27:46 ◼ ► And isn't that egg on your face to stand on that stage and be like, oh, the big boys are here now and we're going to help everybody get better at this.
00:27:55 ◼ ► And they hadn't figured it out. And the people who were observing them who had worked on this elsewhere were like, I don't think this makes sense.
00:28:02 ◼ ► I don't know how they could do this. And you know what, to me, that's the, this is a product that is irrelevant, right?
00:28:12 ◼ ► And I think it's only been magnified because it's been this legendary missing product in a small community who focuses on this stuff.
00:28:23 ◼ ► Yeah. It's a footnote product. It would have been a nice spiff on top of an iPhone sale for the holidays of 2017.
00:28:33 ◼ ► Is you come into the Apple store and they upsell you to an AirPower and isn't that great?
00:28:42 ◼ ► It's a little bit like, you know, the Mac Pro was, I honestly think way more people cared about the Mac Pro when there was this question about what was going on with it than would actually care.
00:28:53 ◼ ► And the Mac Mini 2, right? So there's this thing about Apple and mystery and why aren't they saying anything?
00:28:58 ◼ ► And that's the nature of Apple. But, you know, so anyway, I think in that way, it's really is a tempest in a teapot.
00:29:05 ◼ ► It's just not that big of a deal of a product. For me, the big deal is how is this allowed to happen?
00:29:12 ◼ ► Because something went horribly wrong. Something went wrong in Apple's estimation of what kind of products it could make.
00:29:18 ◼ ► And that's the thing that presumably in the last year and a half managers at Apple have had to grapple with, which is like, you know, I would be shocked if there is not an Apple University course seminar.
00:29:31 ◼ ► If not now, then soon about what went wrong with AirPower and not to throw people under the bus, but like this was a failure of Apple's internal culture.
00:29:39 ◼ ► Somewhere, somehow somebody was very confident that they had completely figured this thing out and they were wrong.
00:29:45 ◼ ► Well, Jason, it could have been fear, not confidence, right? That like somebody was tasked with this project. I've worked in a big company and this person was like, well, I know I've been told I need to do this.
00:30:00 ◼ ► I can't say no. Yeah, but that is a failure of the internal culture, right? This is like when Steven and I talk about space stuff on Liftoff on the podcast we do on Relay FM.
00:30:11 ◼ ► It's a great show about space. If you're interested in space tech, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what they talk about on Liftoff.
00:30:16 ◼ ► Thank you. You remember the tagline. That's great. NASA, you know, NASA culture after both of the space shuttle disasters, you know, they're looking at this culture of we want to get, we want to fly,
00:30:28 ◼ ► but you have to counter that with the ability of people involved in working on it to say something's wrong, we have to stop. And you have to be able to let those people feel free to raise their hand and basically say, I know everybody, hundreds of people, thousands of people are working to this thing that the whole nation wants to see where we go and we fly the space shuttle right now.
00:30:51 ◼ ► Somebody has to raise their hand and say, so this is wrong. We can't do this. And you can trace both of the space shuttle accidents back to the culture kind of getting rolling and into this point where they kind of like don't, they just want to go.
00:31:07 ◼ ► And that's when you make mistakes. And in that case, it's human lives that are at risk. But that is the kind of thing I think that you have to look at at Apple, which is for a product like this, which is there needs to be, employees need to be able to raise their hand and say, no, this isn't going to work and be listened to.
00:31:28 ◼ ► And if you get that in space terms, I think they call it go fever, where like everybody just wants to rush to the end and you're just the person who's complaining and you're getting in the way, that's when bad things can happen.
00:31:43 ◼ ► And so that's, and so, you know, again, without knowing the details of this and just looking at it, it could be any number of specific things, but in the end, it didn't work. It was either tested and didn't work or they thought it would work, but they hadn't tested it yet.
00:31:59 ◼ ► But you can, you can go through the list. A failure happened where a product was announced and marketed that couldn't ship and never did. And if I'm Apple, and again, I think Apple customers, it is irrelevant. It's a product that didn't ship. They could never buy it. It's irrelevant.
00:32:17 ◼ ► If I'm inside Apple though, if I'm doing a course at Apple university, you got to do failure analysis on this. You've got to say what went wrong. Cause that's how you change and grow. So I would actually be shocked if they hadn't already done this.
00:32:29 ◼ ► I know it's sensitive and all that, but like, this is such a great Apple, not to quote John Syracuse here, but when John Syracuse was talking about Pixar, you know, one of the things that he talked about a lot is, one of the ways you learn is to deal with failure.
00:32:42 ◼ ► And Pixar had such a long string of successes that his concern was that they weren't, they were setting themselves up for a fall because they had never really, their culture had never really had to figure out how to deal with failure.
00:32:58 ◼ ► That, well, yeah, yeah, the good dinosaur is really a failure that is, but just my opinion is that that feels very much like a movie that was completely broken and they tried their best to get it out to be okay. And it was okay. But you know, anyway, the point here is Apple has had such a run of success.
00:33:14 ◼ ► They, they, they are rightly confident in their ability to make products that are great. Right. And, you know, you lose the muscles maybe to say, to say, Oh, we can't do this and you need to have that. You need to be able to deal with failure.
00:33:30 ◼ ► So, I, I think it's a fascinating story in terms of how does Apple internally, which we'll never see, we'll never hear about, but like, I think Apple may actually emerge from AirPower as a more functional, hopefully more functional company in terms of knowing what they're capable of, of being disciplined with what they bring to the public.
00:33:52 ◼ ► And maybe this is a lesson where some people are going to be able to win some arguments that they lost before about this isn't ready. Don't announce it. And I think that's good because they should not announce pre-announce. There was no reason to pre-announce AirPower. Right.
00:34:07 ◼ ► There was really no reason other than it let them tell a little bit broader story about the iPhone 8 and 10 wireless charging.
00:34:14 ◼ ► There was no point because they decided to support the standards. If this was the only wireless charging option, but it was going to come out later, then fine. But the fact that like the iPhone came out with the ability to use any charging pad and they worked with some companies to get some, you know, in their source or whatever.
00:34:38 ◼ ► I don't know why exactly, but like for a long time I've been in the unpopular camp of thinking this product was never going to come to market.
00:34:47 ◼ ► And I think really for me, it stems from a, I have like a unwarranted concern about wireless charging, like just the technology makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I don't know why it is exactly.
00:35:01 ◼ ► But like the heat thing has always been a concern for me. And it's, and it only got worse when I heard about the fact that like this product was specifically difficult.
00:35:11 ◼ ► So when I looked into it, like, and kind of thought about what it would take to make just from a technical perspective, this product would have been incredibly difficult because you had to put multiple, multiple coils in there because the core, like, so anybody that's used a chart or like wireless charging pad will know that you can put your phone down on the phone.
00:35:30 ◼ ► You can put your phone down on the pad, but it not be lined up properly. Right. And then you kind of have to move it. But what Apple was trying to make of AirPower is you could put it anywhere on this map.
00:35:41 ◼ ► So they had to have tons of overlapping wireless coils and most likely a separate set of coils for the Apple watch because the Apple watch doesn't support Qi charging.
00:35:54 ◼ ► And it was also considered, I don't know if this is the case, people have like suggested that AirPods were never supposed to be Qi charging. It was supposed to be proprietary.
00:36:03 ◼ ► So then you had to have like Qi plus Apple's proprietary and all of that overlapping, like just the sheer technical power, the wiring that would have needed to go.
00:36:13 ◼ ► Honestly, I thought it would come out of a fan in it if it was going to have anything. That's a joke. But like I've kind of been, when it did not make holiday 2017, I've been pretty convinced that it was never going to happen.
00:36:28 ◼ ► And it seems like that's the case. Last week, so prior to this, couple of days prior to this, new AirPods were released and they can be charged with Qi charging. And you can either get them, basically the second generation AirPods with the wireless charging or without or you can buy the wireless charging case.
00:36:48 ◼ ► I've seen a lot of people making this point and I vehemently disagree with it, but I want to get your point saying that it is bad or deceitful that Apple put the AirPods up for sale before they canceled AirPower.
00:36:59 ◼ ► And I think that that is kind of, that seems ridiculous to me. And I want to know what you think about that.
00:37:06 ◼ ► I don't know. I mean, the, so I think for most people it's not a big deal. I think for most people it's not a big deal because what I said about AirPower is really true, which is it's nothing. It's nothing. It's just, it was a thing set on stage and then forgotten, essentially.
00:37:31 ◼ ► I bought, I mean, I bought my new AirPods with the Qi charging thing because it had Qi charging, right? Like for me, it was, it was definitely not a, "Oh, well, I'll buy these now and then I'll get an AirPower."
00:37:49 ◼ ► You know, well, let's say that it happens so quickly that if you are, if you're upset about this, you should just return them, right? Which you can do. You're still within your rights to do that. So I don't think it's a huge deal.
00:38:02 ◼ ► I can see how some people might feel frustrated about the sequence and the fact that they maybe did speculate that they were going to get an AirPower and then, you know, but the fact is if they've got a recent phone and they've got a set of headphones with a recharger that's a Qi charger,
00:38:18 ◼ ► like they were going to need to buy something anyway, probably, if they wanted to do wireless charging. They may have not gotten, my Twitter timeline has been flooded over the last week with people who are, who were holding out for AirPower, who are now just shopping for all the other, you know, the other chargers that are out there.
00:38:34 ◼ ► So, you know, I don't know. It's, it's, like I said, I think, are there some people who maybe bought it completely speculating that they were all in on AirPower and are now sad? Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. I don't think that was Apple's intent.
00:38:49 ◼ ► And if you really are that bedded out of shape about it, I would say return them or exchange them for a pair that doesn't wireless charge. Although I have been enjoying the fact that especially the way it generally works is during the day, I'll go out and walk the dog or exercise or whatever.
00:39:06 ◼ ► And then I'll come back and my wife is gone to work. So her wireless charger is open and I just popped a little AirPods on there and that's great.
00:39:15 ◼ ► Yeah, I, it's like, if you, it just seems strange to me that like you would, now that AirPower doesn't exist, now you don't want Qi charging on your AirPods.
00:39:27 ◼ ► Like there are other wireless chargers, like if that wireless charging on the AirPods only worked with AirPower and they released it beforehand, then yeah, I'm totally on board with your upset.
00:39:38 ◼ ► But they, there are Qi charging pads everywhere. Like there is a product that you can buy. There are loads of options. Just get one and then you'll be fine.
00:39:47 ◼ ► I don't think that, it just seems strange to me that like people, I've just seen some people like super upset about it and it just seems like a really weird, really weird thing to me.
00:39:55 ◼ ► And also just in general, like this is an interesting thing as you noted, right? Like this is an interesting thing, but AirPower is not an important product. Like the actual product itself is unimportant. The story is more important.
00:40:10 ◼ ► Yeah. The relevance to this is what does it say about how Apple is working today and if they have, you know, problems and this is a very rare public display of product design failure at Apple. That's interesting.
00:40:24 ◼ ► Yes. As a product, it is essentially irrelevant. So yeah. Because as well, like think about wrap your brain around this one. It was a bad product. It never worked.
00:40:36 ◼ ► So it was a bad product. It never worked and it would have been probably way too expensive and most people would have opted for a perfectly nice Qi charger.
00:40:44 ◼ ► This is why they've canceled it because the only option that they had was an expensive product that didn't work properly because like for them to be able to put it out, they clearly couldn't do what they wanted, right?
00:40:54 ◼ ► Because they've not even delayed it. They've like straight up canceled it. Like this product will probably never exist because they are fighting against the laws of physics with this one.
00:41:03 ◼ ► I think that was what eventually ended up stopping them is that they just couldn't get it to work because the technology that they are having to take advantage of, I just don't think is built to do what they wanted to do with it.
00:41:22 ◼ ► Yeah. I really like the Mophie wireless charging base. I have one of those. I think it's really nice. It's 40 bucks. If you are looking for a Qi charger, I like that one a lot. It's a low profile.
00:41:36 ◼ ► It's called the, oh, it's actually called the Mophie wireless charging base. That is the name of the product. Okay. Yep. That's it.
00:41:43 ◼ ► Yeah. I've seen a lot of people talking about, uh, this, this one called Nomad because it is a wireless charger that does have like multiple coils in it. I don't have one, but I've used one and they are very nice.
00:41:56 ◼ ► Like you can, you can have two devices side by side, or you can like lay the phone on it because it has multiple coils in it. When you put the phone down, you're more likely to hit a coil easily.
00:42:06 ◼ ► Um, but they are super back ordered because it is a good looking product and it does, uh, they have one that also has an Apple watch charger in it so it can do everything you need.
00:42:16 ◼ ► Um, and also, uh, if you are still looking for these things, our friends over at Studio Neat, they make us a range of products called the material dock, which, and some of them have wireless charging in them as well.
00:42:26 ◼ ► So there are options. They're just not made by Apple, but because this is a standardized technology, as long as you're buying from like a company that, that you trust, you're going to get something good. Right. Because it all works.
00:42:40 ◼ ► Yeah. And Apple sells a bunch of them on their site too. There's a Logitech stand, there's a, a Belkin pad. They have a special edition Belkin pad that looks nice. The regular Belkin pad. I have one of those too. It's not as nice as the Mophie.
00:42:53 ◼ ► Um, and then also, yes, there's depending on which one you get, some of them, uh, can charge the iPhone faster than others can. Although I think the ones that are on Apple site are all like Apple approved, uh, work at the right charging rate.
00:43:06 ◼ ► Mm hmm. So there's a bunch of options available to you. Uh, none of them made by Apple and I don't expect them to make, I don't think for the foreseeable future, Apple will not make a product like this because even if they could do it, I don't think they would want to do it now.
00:43:20 ◼ ► That's, that's kind of my view on these things. That's probably it. That's probably it. All right. Today's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom. We love Pingdom and everybody should love Pingdom because Pingdom do what we want with the web.
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00:44:47 ◼ ► So last week we didn't get to talk about the iPad mini because Apple had their big event. We could have some more thoughts on the last week's news in a little bit, but I wanted to make sure that we spent some time talking about the iPad mini because you have one for review.
00:45:03 ◼ ► And it seems like from your review, from reviews I've seen from other outlets, everyone seems pretty happy with this device. Maybe more than we necessarily would have expected when assuming that there is going to one day be another one.
00:45:18 ◼ ► I don't know if necessarily everybody thought that there will be an iPad mini and when it arrives, we're all going to like it.
00:45:24 ◼ ► Well, I think a lot of us who are not regular iPad mini users moved on, right? Because the new iPads for a long time were not the iPad mini.
00:45:33 ◼ ► And I used to use an iPad mini, but I switched to, you know, did I go to the iPad Air and then to the iPad Pro or maybe straight to the iPad Pro?
00:45:45 ◼ ► And the mini, you know, you just, you forget if you're, if you're not using it, you forget all the good things about it are its size. And the bad thing about it was that it hadn't been updated and it wasn't modern.
00:45:57 ◼ ► And the great thing about the new iPad mini is that it keeps all the things that were good about it.
00:46:01 ◼ ► It is literally the same size as the iPad mini for, and it's modern. It's got modern processor.
00:46:07 ◼ ► It uses the Apple pencil. It's got, you know, all of this kind of modern iPad stuff in it.
00:46:17 ◼ ► And what that means is that if you like the mini size, then there are no, you know, essentially no compromises, almost no compromises here.
00:46:26 ◼ ► It is a very good iPad mini, which we haven't had in a long time because it's been a long time since it got an update.
00:46:36 ◼ ► I wrote my review of the iPad mini, or at least half of it on the iPad mini with a, like a Bluetooth keyboard with a magic keyboard.
00:46:45 ◼ ► And that was perfectly fine. I mean, multitasking is a little weird on such a small screen.
00:46:50 ◼ ► I think it's better for people as it has always been for people with very good eyesight because it's taking the 9.7 inch screen and then squishing it down.
00:47:07 ◼ ► So everything's smaller, which means that if you want to use it as a reading device or something like that,
00:47:11 ◼ ► you might want to crank up the default text size in order to get it back to kind of a reasonable size.
00:47:16 ◼ ► But I will tell you, like, it is, especially if you're somebody who loves the iPad and has a big iPad, you know,
00:47:23 ◼ ► I think we have that conversation about the multi iPad lifestyle again, because I've definitely heard from people.
00:47:31 ◼ ► Now, I like having a Kindle, but I also read a lot on my iPad because I read newspaper apps and Apple news and all sorts of other stuff on my iPad.
00:47:40 ◼ ► And this is a, you know, so nice and small and light iPad compared to my enormous iPad Pro.
00:47:52 ◼ ► So one of the things that's interesting to me, I think, about this iPad mini is that from a software perspective,
00:48:03 ◼ ► Like it can do multitasking. It can have three apps, which the previous one couldn't do.
00:48:17 ◼ ► Do you even think of it in the same way when you're using it like the larger iPads or does your kind of mindset shift when you're using something smaller?
00:48:26 ◼ ► I have to say, the way I viewed it was sort of like, well, I can do this and that's great, but this is sort of ridiculous and nobody should do this.
00:48:35 ◼ ► There's some aspect of that, which is on such a small screen and even on the 9.7, there's some truth in this.
00:48:48 ◼ ► Yeah, so it's cramped, but it's usable, which is nice because if you've got that muscle memory of like, I just want to drag this app out so I can see these things side by side,
00:48:58 ◼ ► which I do all the time, put Fantastic Hal on one side and Doodle on the other so that I can see what my calendar is when I'm saying when I'm available.
00:49:09 ◼ ► So having that there, it's good because if you have used other iPads, you don't get frustrated and say, oh, this thing doesn't do that.
00:49:21 ◼ ► And again, some of the people who use iPads, who love iPads the most, have great eyes and small hands and they're kids.
00:49:33 ◼ ► And for them, they can multitask and they can draw on it with an Apple pencil or that Logitech crayon or whatever they want.
00:49:41 ◼ ► It's great for kids. It's great as a reader. And honestly, if you are somebody who likes that size, that's the beauty of it.
00:49:50 ◼ ► You don't have to make a compromise. You can't use the Apple pencil or whatever, but you don't have to go back in time several years in order to use that size if you like that size.
00:50:01 ◼ ► I think that these are kind of pretty similar reports. I've seen reviews of the new iPad Air and people seem to really like it.
00:50:11 ◼ ► And I think in an interesting way, and I totally get it, it doesn't get the same criticism from people that the Pro gets about what it's capable of,
00:50:20 ◼ ► because it is not intended to necessarily be, at least in name, like this is your computer replacement tablet.
00:50:34 ◼ ► It doesn't look like an iPad. It doesn't have USB-C. It doesn't raise the question as much, because these are pretty powerful devices,
00:50:42 ◼ ► but it doesn't raise the question as much as the iPad Pro about the gap between functionality and power.
00:50:50 ◼ ► Functionality, price, and power, where it's like, oh, this is priced like a laptop and has the power of a laptop, but doesn't do all the things that a laptop does.
00:51:01 ◼ ► The iPad Mini and the iPad Air, yeah, they're still pretty powerful. You could still ask that question, but it's less about that.
00:51:10 ◼ ► You mentioned multi-pad lifestyle, the idea of having multiple iPads. And I think that this definitely does fit that idea, maybe even more so than a lot of people would have thought before.
00:51:22 ◼ ► This is like a little notepad. This is like a little book that you could have. I mean, yeah, it's not a cheap device, but there is maybe, with something like this,
00:51:32 ◼ ► especially if you're rocking the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, if you're looking for something smaller, this definitely fits that maybe more than any of the other devices have for the last few years.
00:51:42 ◼ ► Oh, something else that I wanted to mention. I think it's got lost. I missed this in the initial news that came out, that the Logitech Crayon,
00:51:51 ◼ ► which is the only third-party device that has some of Apple's blessed technology in it to work like the Apple Pencil in some ways,
00:52:05 ◼ ► Yeah, that is every single modern iPad. So I tried it on the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Didn't work. But on the current iPad Pros, with the iOS update that came out,
00:52:20 ◼ ► and then on the sixth-generation iPad and the new iPad Mini and the new iPad Air, the pencil works across all of them, or the crayon works across all of them,
00:52:31 ◼ ► which means it works across all of them in a way that the Apple Pencil doesn't, because you have the Apple Pencil 2 on some of them and the Apple Pencil 1 on some of them.
00:52:41 ◼ ► The crayon isn't for everybody. I have one, and I like it. It doesn't do pressure sensitivity, so if you're using it for drawing, you're not going to like it.
00:52:50 ◼ ► It is a carpenter's pencil style, so it's got a flat, wide side and then a thin side, so it holds in your hand differently, although I kind of like it.
00:53:02 ◼ ► I like how you've got a little more grip area. As somebody who is not a great pen and pencil user, I like the kind of grip of it.
00:53:10 ◼ ► It has a physical power on/off button, so it's a very different kind of look and feel. It's anodized aluminum with kind of like neon silicone gaskets on it.
00:53:22 ◼ ► It's got a plug into which you plug a lightning cable, so the opposite of the Apple Pencil 1.
00:53:29 ◼ ► It is a very different product. Oh, but here's the other thing. So you should consider it if you've got like an iPad Pro and an iPad Mini or something like that.
00:53:37 ◼ ► If you want to use the same implement across both of them, you can do that, and that's actually one of the most interesting things about the product and has been since it launched, but it was more of a school feature before.
00:53:52 ◼ ► So if you want to take an Apple Pencil from one iPad and use it on another iPad, you have to re-pair it with the new iPad, and that's true for Pencil 1 or Pencil 2.
00:54:04 ◼ ► The crayon, when you touch the crayon to the surface of a compatible iPad, it draws, and then you move it to another iPad that's also compatible, it draws.
00:54:18 ◼ ► Like it just goes, it hops from iPad to iPad, which is, you can see why that might be good in a classroom setting, because you don't have to worry about pairing and unpairing these things all the time,
00:54:27 ◼ ► but I think if you've got multiple iPads around your house, and maybe it's a shared crayon that anybody in the house can use if they want to draw something or write something,
00:54:36 ◼ ► so it's an interesting product, and it's cheaper than the Apple Pencil, but again, not as fully functional in terms of pressure sensitivity and stuff like that,
00:54:48 ◼ ► Something I find interesting though, the reason it doesn't work on older iPads is because it needs some kind of technology within the iPad, right, to fight, to allow it to connect.
00:54:58 ◼ ► I think there's a radio frequency that is built into whatever chip they're using from the sixth generation iPad forward that was not there previously.
00:55:08 ◼ ► But it's fascinating to me that that chip's been in the iPad Pro at this time and nothing's happened with it.
00:55:19 ◼ ► And like I see something like, huh, again, I have no real thought about that other than it's interesting, but that is very interesting to me, right?
00:55:26 ◼ ► This has been possible, but for whatever reason, they just waited. I don't know what the reason was, but it's super interesting.
00:55:34 ◼ ► And as Zach has mentioned in the chat room, which I agree, like the listing on Apple's website, it only references the sixth generation iPad itself.
00:55:42 ◼ ► It doesn't really talk about compatibility wise the other iPads. It mentions, oh, see, this is super weird.
00:55:48 ◼ ► The product itself is called Logitech Crayon for iPad sixth generation. In the tech specs on the listing on Apple's website, it talks about iPad Air, Mini and the iPad.
00:56:06 ◼ ► I think that is maybe the overall theme of today's episode is there's some weird stuff going on and we don't really know what it means, but it's interesting that it's happening.
00:56:18 ◼ ► I wanted to just provide one piece of follow up because we were talking about Apple Arcade a lot and like, is this going to be a closed off thing?
00:56:26 ◼ ► There is a contact form on Apple's developer site where you can submit your game or idea for your game for consideration to be included in Apple Arcade. From my perspective, this just tells me that it is a closed off system that you have to be invited to.
00:56:47 ◼ ► But I don't think for the foreseeable future, and this is honestly for me, enforce that, that we're going to see any way that a developer can just opt in to be included in Apple Arcade.
00:56:58 ◼ ► Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I actually view this as a positive because I thought it was going to be, um, and maybe this is just a deflection, but I thought this was going to be very much like if you have to ask, you can't afford it kind of stuff.
00:57:14 ◼ ► Like don't, don't call us. We'll call you. That's probably a more appropriate thing to say. Don't call us. We'll call you, um, when you impress us with your game prowess.
00:57:23 ◼ ► And instead they put up a link in the developer section that says, yes, uh, tell us if you're awesome and we'll look at that.
00:57:30 ◼ ► And maybe it really is just that they got besieged by people asking about this and they decided to create a funnel or they knew they were going to get besieged and they created a funnel so that people had someplace to go.
00:57:41 ◼ ► And for them, it's like, look, we have this thing, we'll check it when we want to check it. And there might be some interesting stuff in there.
00:57:46 ◼ ► What I wonder what, how they view in terms of like talent scouts. I mean, it's possible that things will come across the transom that are interesting. It is, you know, they are, it is developer relations and presumably you will need a track record to be in Apple Arcade.
00:58:00 ◼ ► So if somebody clicked that link and said, I've actually developed 15 App Store games and they've all done pretty well and I'm working on something that would be perfect for Apple Arcade, then there's probably a developer relations person who kicks that over to whoever is doing Apple Arcade and says, this one could be interesting.
00:58:14 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, to be honest, Apple should already know the companies that they would want in this thing.
00:58:19 ◼ ► Yeah, they, they, they know their partnerships and they should be watching the App Store as well. Right. And to see the people that like, you know, when we were talking about Zach Gage, um, you know, who has made so many great games like that, that I would be shocked if somebody from Apple had not talked to Zach Gage.
00:58:34 ◼ ► How would you not talk to Zach Gage after he's made so many amazing iOS games? Like have a conversation. Maybe he says he's not interested, but you know, I would imagine that Apple's Apple Arcade people are scouring the App Store's games for good games.
00:58:48 ◼ ► That not, not to bring into Apple Arcade even, but to find those developers and say, would you like to work with us? And it's weird cause it's like a development process. It's almost like Hollywood like in that way, but it definitely isn't going to be, Hey, I wrote a game.
00:59:02 ◼ ► I will check the box to submit it to Apple Arcade and see what happens. I, it does not seem to be in the cards. This is a curated service. These are business deals being made.
00:59:11 ◼ ► And it's probably that if you've got a great idea for a game, what you should do is, is publish the game and have everybody notice how great it is. And then you point to that and say, Hey, Apple, everybody liked this game.
00:59:26 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about Apple news. Plus, uh, have you been spending any time with it? I haven't been able to because hashtag UK, but, um, I want to know if you spent any time with it and what your kind of, uh, feelings are on the overall experience and the content.
00:59:41 ◼ ► Uh, I haven't spending some time with it. I never really liked Apple news and I never really liked the Apple news interface. And I've spent the last week reminding myself of why, um, I really hope they're doing a revision of the interface in, uh, June at WWDC, uh, for release in the fall because, uh, it's not good.
01:00:02 ◼ ► Like Apple news is kind of grafted on and you got to go many levels down and I, I really want to be able to say these are my favorite news sources and then see the stories from them.
01:00:13 ◼ ► But it's so deep down in this kind of magazine concept. Uh, it's hard to find the wall street journal and the LA times in there because, you know, and you can dig through and then tap on their masthead logo and then favorite them.
01:00:25 ◼ ► And then you've got a shortcut to them, but like that part's hard. The magazines are very much like, here's a list of magazine stories I would really like, you know, and maybe they'll improve on the tagging side too.
01:00:36 ◼ ► But like sports illustrated releases, their baseball preview issue, and they've got a great cover story about baseball.
01:00:42 ◼ ► I want that to float up in my little baseball favorites list that I've got set up in Apple news. And as far as I can tell, they don't, they don't cross the streams and that's frustrating.
01:00:51 ◼ ► It's like, I just want it one place. I don't want to hunt down sports illustrated or ESPN, the magazine or whatever. If they've got good articles about baseball or, you know, whatever your favorite topic is, those should float up to me.
01:01:01 ◼ ► And, uh, if they are, I don't, I'm not seeing them. And I think it's really confusing. And, uh, I think it's great in terms of what content they've got, especially the stuff that's in Apple news format.
01:01:12 ◼ ► I think that's really interesting, but it feels tacked on to an existing product that already had a weird interface. And so it's sort of doubly weird now.
01:01:22 ◼ ► So I don't, I don't love that about it. Um, so from a reader's perspective, I like the idea of the content. And once you get into an article, it's okay.
01:01:32 ◼ ► Although even there, I got to say like, so watch the, no, the wall street journal content, like every third paragraph there, they insert garbage.
01:01:40 ◼ ► So this is, you know, you're, you're with your subscription to Apple news. Plus you get wall street journal content. Great.
01:01:48 ◼ ► Cause that's just paywalled on the outside, but it's literally like two paragraphs and an ad for other wall street journal content followed by two more paragraphs and an ad followed by two more paragraphs and an ad for related content from the wall street journal followed by two paragraphs, followed by another ad.
01:02:10 ◼ ► See, that's the gamification of the system already happening, right? Like this is the gamification, like the, the, the kind of exploitation system because for these people to be paid, they need to have people looking at their content.
01:02:23 ◼ ► So instead of them serving you traditional advertising, they're replacing those ad blocks with ads for their content. Because then if you go read more wall street journal content, you're going to get more money from Apple.
01:02:35 ◼ ► So I understand why they're doing it, but then the idea of Apple saying, there's no ads in this is like, well, what's an ad let's define what an ad is first, shall we? Cause you can definitely advertise your own content.
01:02:46 ◼ ► So I just called up a news story about the Ethiopian airlines, 737 crash. And you know, as you scroll down, you get more from WSJ within a little gray bar followed by five headlines. So how the points guy became the credit card Kingmaker the right way to choose a college, right?
01:03:08 ◼ ► Like, and then after those headlines, it immediately goes back into the story. So that's super jarring because it tells you where the, the house ad begins, but not where it ends. And then you continue reading.
01:03:18 ◼ ► There's a picture and two more paragraphs and then what's news in a big gray box, which is sign up for our newsletter. Then there's three more paragraphs and then there's related coverage with three more bulleted headlines.
01:03:30 ◼ ► By the way, the first set of headlines was not bulleted. The second set of headlines is bulleted. Again, there's no conclusion to that. So then you just kind of have to find your way to the next paragraph of this story that you're trying to read, kind of having it flow together.
01:03:44 ◼ ► It's not on the side. It's just right in your face. And this is the premium I paid for this experience. And it's, it's bad. It's just lousy. So you're right. It is. They are trying to push more views because that's how they get more money.
01:03:59 ◼ ► And probably the argument inside the wall street journal was, well, you know, we'll, we'll give away some content, but we're also going to like use it to heavily promote our newsletters and other stuff, which gets them into our, you know, our database instead of Apple's database.
01:04:13 ◼ ► And, and so you can see them doing it. So, you know, I'm, I'm disappointed as a reader. And I think it could be way better and I hope it does get better when they have a little more time to, you know, redesign the news app with news plus in mind.
01:04:28 ◼ ► I mean, I know you're not everybody who uses news is going to be a news plus subscriber and that's fine, but I would like a kind of like an experience that is better thought out for everybody than maybe what is there now.
01:04:39 ◼ ► From a publisher standpoint I am fascinated by this and, and I want to, I want to point to a very good conversation on a podcast you may be familiar with Myke called connected last week.
01:04:53 ◼ ► Wow. And Federico had some, some good thoughts about this. And I just wanted to say as somebody who worked in magazines for a long time, like the 50% revenue share, whatever that is, I remain deeply skeptical that any magazine publisher will really be able to
01:05:12 ◼ ► have this be a good revenue source. But what really struck me is Federico was talking about the idea of having to build in Apple news format. And I want to echo something he said, which is a lot of people out there, their attitude is like, Oh, Apple news format is easy.
01:05:31 ◼ ► Just do it. It's like, no, that's not how it works. Like you're a publication, whether you're on the web or whether you've got a magazine or a newspaper, you've got existing tech that's all set up to do and has been built over time to do certain things.
01:05:45 ◼ ► Apple news format isn't easy. There are a lot of things that are complicated about it. I don't do Apple news format on six colors because I don't think I can technically, I think because of the way that my system is built.
01:05:56 ◼ ► I've actually given some thought to changing my CMS just to do it, but I don't see a lot of benefit. Maybe there will be a growing benefit over time, but I'm just doing regular old HTML and RSS right now.
01:06:07 ◼ ► Yeah. CMS is a content management system. So that's the publishing system you use to generate your web content or your magazine content, quite frankly.
01:06:17 ◼ ► And so first off, so it's, it's a little like telling a developer, Oh, this is an easy feature to add. It'll just take a day, right? Like, no, that's not, you don't understand the complexity of these systems.
01:06:27 ◼ ► So adding Apple news format at all is an issue. If you're a magazine, right? I think they've got half these magazines basically to do it. Like they have to do a new content export in this format.
01:06:41 ◼ ► And they're, and they're usually laying things out in cork express or InDesign and generating out essentially PDFs, whether you print it or you go into some digital mag format, it's basically a PDF out of a layout.
01:06:54 ◼ ► They also need to get those articles into Apple news format. So it's technically complex and that means it costs, it costs money for you to hire a developer or task your on staff developer to build this thing.
01:07:09 ◼ ► And I'll tell you, I used to fight long and hard to get prioritization for development resources to get features that we wanted implemented. It's hard to do, especially if you've got limited resources at a publishing company, very limited tech resources usually.
01:07:25 ◼ ► And if you have to get somebody from the outside, they have to understand your system. So it's extra complicated. And that doesn't even cover the other part of this, which is the doing of it.
01:07:33 ◼ ► Because most of these things, it doesn't happen automatically. You have to have a person every time you do an issue, do an export, get things in the right format.
01:07:43 ◼ ► It is really complicated. It adds a lot and all along the way, you have to make that calculation. Like, is it worth it? What are we getting out of this?
01:07:53 ◼ ► And you're getting some money. You're not getting customer names. You may be able to do a Wall Street Journal and insert lots of junk in it in order to get more views, which is more money or to get names through a newsletter or something like that.
01:08:05 ◼ ► But it is a difficult thing as a publishing business to make that calculation. And whether you're doing an export from your page layout or whether you're doing an export from your web publishing system and doing a different version of that, it is, it's expensive and it takes time.
01:08:20 ◼ ► And they talk about the live covers and all that. It's like, well, now you've got to do a video workflow and have your cover designer and pay them extra to get some video and to do a totally separate design in order to do the live cover thing that Apple showed off.
01:08:36 ◼ ► So, you know, I just, it is my skepticism about the reported 50% is all informed by my thoughts about like how Apple is really asking people to make a custom content workflow to get things out to Apple News.
01:08:55 ◼ ► And then when Federico talks about how everybody's basically using one template, like Apple has provided some templates for content in Apple News format and everybody's kind of using one template.
01:09:10 ◼ ► Because it's even more expensive to pay somebody to build, you know, multiple Apple News templates or to have people formatting like article by article, these special designs of this stuff.
01:09:25 ◼ ► And it just, it all adds up. It's not easy. It's hard. It's complicated. It's expensive. It takes time. And that is a challenge for Apple.
01:09:35 ◼ ► Now it's way better than the old approach on newsstand, which was, hey, everybody write an app because then you're not only doing all the content flow stuff, but you're also developing an iOS app.
01:09:50 ◼ ► And if you're a publisher, it, you know, you, you have to analyze that and, and see what's going on.
01:09:56 ◼ ► I did notice by the way, the Mac world, my former employer, and currently still I write for them weekly, uh, they're in there in Apple News format, which I am fascinated by.
01:10:05 ◼ ► I really wonder what the backstory is there. Um, they're, they're in Apple News format while Mac life seems to be there just as a PDF right now.
01:10:13 ◼ ► Yeah. And it is this expense and this potential expense for what nobody knows as being any gain yet, which is probably why most of the magazines are like a lot of the magazines are still PDFs in Apple News format.
01:10:25 ◼ ► I imagine that those are people who are in texture and are like, yeah, we're not interested in doing that right now or we can't or we can't do it in time or whatever it is.
01:10:33 ◼ ► Or it should, cause as well, like the PDF is, if you're a traditional magazine, like if you're actually publishing a magazine, not like where a lot of the companies would be web first, but there are a lot of like companies that aren't, they've still made magazines.
01:10:46 ◼ ► It's probably trivial really for them to put those into Apple system because these are Macs, these are like PDFs that exist, like they have to make them to make the magazine.
01:10:56 ◼ ► So yeah, that those ones it's like, well, we'll give it a go. And that's probably why there is so many of those.
01:11:07 ◼ ► But the key is seeing over time, how does it change? Do we end up with more Apple news plus magazines in general? Do we end up with more news companies moving in and do they look like they belong there or do they look like they're just scans of magazines?
01:11:30 ◼ ► I mean, it just, it is very funny that I spend enough time in the magazine world that I learned all of this stuff and you know, every time Apple deals with them and Apple news plus is a good example.
01:11:46 ◼ ► It is, it's a real challenge because I think it is an opportunity for some magazines to get their content out there in a way like getting magazines to think about articles and not, uh, pieces of paper or PDF pages is hard.
01:12:01 ◼ ► Take it from me. I spent years dragging people into thinking about the web and this is a little bit like that, but with a, um, you know, with the carrot is money from Apple for, for page views basically.
01:12:15 ◼ ► So, um, you know, I hope it works out. I do think Apple news plus is a nice idea and, uh, there are things I don't like about it, but I think there are some potential there too, but it's going to be hard because I'm not sure.
01:12:28 ◼ ► Ultimately, I'm just not sure whether the business model is very strong for the publishers, for the content generators to do the work.
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01:14:48 ◼ ► It's like the late lasers this week. Richard says, "I've been listening to Upgrade Forever."
01:15:04 ◼ ► That you've been listening to this show and you're only just getting your first Apple device. Thank you so much.
01:15:10 ◼ ► But Richard's getting an iPad Air 2019 with a Brydge keyboard and a Logitech Crayon. That is a great setup.
01:15:16 ◼ ► But Richard wants to know, "Can you recommend any resources to help quickly get up to speed and get the most out of iOS for the iPad?"
01:15:24 ◼ ► So one that I wanted to rec- I actually have two to recommend to Richard. One is Federico's iOS reviews.
01:15:30 ◼ ► So Federico did an iOS review like he does every year. So the iOS 12 review is the most recent.
01:15:36 ◼ ► I did an audiobook version of it as well, which you can buy. But the web version is available for you to read for free on the website.
01:15:43 ◼ ► I'll put a link in the show notes. It's very nicely laid out. Federico basically dives into every single feature of the operating system.
01:15:49 ◼ ► So this is a really good way to find out how some pieces work. So that's really great. So that's available to you.
01:15:55 ◼ ► And you could also look at one of the Take Control books. So this is the Take Control series. Is it still published by TipBits, Jason?
01:16:09 ◼ ► Yeah, it's like an independent thing now, right? Like Take Control is now its own thing where it used to be part of TipBits.
01:16:14 ◼ ► But Josh Senters wrote the Take Control of iOS 12 book, which is in essence a guide where Federico is kind of looking at the features and talking about them.
01:16:25 ◼ ► So there are a couple of, I think, really good resources. But I will say, though, if you've been listening to shows like this for a while, you probably know a lot of it.
01:16:34 ◼ ► But if you're looking for some of the nuts and bolts, there are a couple of good resources for you.
01:16:39 ◼ ► Yeah, I was going to mention maybe he said iPad, though. That's the thing. So David Sparks has a Mac Sparky Field gut about the iPhone.
01:16:48 ◼ ► Which is nice. But back at Macworld, back in the day, we had a MacBasics and an iPadBasics and like these ebooks.
01:16:56 ◼ ► But they're all out of date because they don't do them anymore. So it's very sad. But those are all good choices. Federico's stuff is great.
01:17:02 ◼ ► And I think that iOS 12 Take Control book is a great example, Josh's book, because it's going to be much more of a traditional kind of like step-by-step kind of thing.
01:17:12 ◼ ► And David Sparks has a shortcuts field gut as well that is if you want to get into the most out, get the most out of iOS for iPad,
01:17:22 ◼ ► shortcuts is a great way to do that. And David takes you through a whole bunch of different shortcuts you can do.
01:17:27 ◼ ► Yeah, David has a bunch of amazing courses and stuff in general as well. I'll put links to all of that in the show notes if it's stuff that you're looking for.
01:17:36 ◼ ► So there's a lot there is a lot of great content available if you're trying to learn this stuff, which is wonderful.
01:17:42 ◼ ► Our next question comes from Myke, not me. What do you think the odds are that the next iPhone or iPad would have support for an Apple built game controller?
01:17:53 ◼ ► Well, I mean, it's 100 percent right, because if Apple does a game controller, it's going to be Bluetooth and it'll work with Apple TV and all that.
01:18:04 ◼ ► I don't think Apple will build a game controller, but if it did, I imagine that it would work with all of them because it would be Bluetooth.
01:18:11 ◼ ► There are a bunch of controls available and Apple has actually been I mean, this is relatively quiet and I say it's quiet like you do it in the open,
01:18:19 ◼ ► but nobody knows because nobody really buys these controllers. They're called MFI, made for iPhone controllers.
01:18:25 ◼ ► They've been adding more support over time. So like more buttons, like, for example, being able to click in the analog sticks called L3 or R3, you know, like on PlayStation, for example.
01:18:40 ◼ ► So there are new controllers now which can support these additional functions like SteelSeries Nimbus is one, the HoriPad is another one.
01:18:48 ◼ ► So these are products that exist that have been existing for a while and Apple is slowly over time adding more functionality to it.
01:18:58 ◼ ► As long as the SteelSeries Nimbus exists, I'm not sure that Apple really needs to make one. That is like a Apple blessed device.
01:19:08 ◼ ► I don't think they need to make one. I don't know if they will make one. They are more likely to make one now than they ever have been before, but I just don't really know if it's something that Apple should or needs to do.
01:19:21 ◼ ► They could just do a better job of promoting the products that already exist, a la Qi charging.
01:19:29 ◼ ► Because Apple can't make that product, so they're going to have to continue to promote and help other people.
01:19:36 ◼ ► Let me put it another way. Do you want the people who brought you the Siri remote for Apple TV to make a game controller? I don't.
01:19:45 ◼ ► Our next question comes from Tyler. Tyler wants to know, "How long do you think that AirPower will continue to be an autocorrected word on the iOS keyboard?"
01:19:55 ◼ ► Because it does the, is it called camel casing when there's a capital letter in the middle?
01:20:00 ◼ ► Do you think this is going to continue? Apple have a trademark on this? What do you think? Do you think they're going to keep it or do you think they'll stop doing it?
01:20:07 ◼ ► I think it's going to continue to be in there for a very, very, very, very long time and it will become an interesting trivia question about why does iOS correct AirPower wrongly?
01:20:17 ◼ ► And the answer is going to be, well, let me tell you a story about a September day, a sunny September day in 2017 when they stood on stage and announced a product that didn't ship.
01:20:26 ◼ ► You know it's one of those things, I assume that a lot of the very hardworking people, places like Macrum is a 9 to 5 Mac who really dig into the betas, right?
01:20:36 ◼ ► I assume that they must have some kind of checklist that they're going through of things that they have to check to see if they've changed and areas to look.
01:20:44 ◼ ► Someone's got to put this on their checklist if that exists, right? Is AirPower still capitalized? When is that going to happen? When will it stop?
01:20:53 ◼ ► Connor asks, after the event last week, my fiancé accepted new terms and conditions for Apple Pay and she is now no longer able to send peer-to-peer payments because she only has a credit card in her Apple wallet.
01:21:07 ◼ ► Does Apple no longer allow credit cards to work with Apple Pay? That is actually very true in fact. That is what happens.
01:21:14 ◼ ► So with the update to iOS, the most recent update to iOS and to watchOS, Apple were no longer allowing credit cards to be the funding source for Apple Cash.
01:21:25 ◼ ► I think it's called, is it called Apple Cash now or is it still called Apple Pay Cash? Whatever it is.
01:21:29 ◼ ► I don't know. Yeah, it's unclear to me and I haven't done the work but it struck me that on stage they were kind of moving to Apple Cash from Apple Pay Cash.
01:21:39 ◼ ► Yeah, no, they've cut off credit cards and you need a debit card to connect and they don't want to pay the credit card fees to fund an Apple Pay Cash account and I think a debit card you can send them the other way and it's basically a fund transfer.
01:21:53 ◼ ► It's free with debit card. It was originally reported that it will still be free with Apple Card. So that was like a thing that was being reported everywhere.
01:22:02 ◼ ► Whether it was believed that was going to be the case or expected but in the 9 to 5 Mac report that I read, they are reporting that this is not the case.
01:22:11 ◼ ► Like that it still won't work even with Apple Card as your only funding method. So the cash back that you're going to get will go there.
01:22:19 ◼ ► But actually trying to fund your Apple Cash balance with a credit card is not even going to work for Apple Card because this was being positioned as like a, "Ha ha, that's how they're going to drive adoption."
01:22:30 ◼ ► Like that was kind of like the looking for the sneaky thing which I would have understood but they're saying that 9 to 5 Mac is saying that no it won't.
01:22:38 ◼ ► So they didn't cite where they got that information but it seemed like they were pretty sure about it.
01:22:43 ◼ ► So it seems like what has probably happened here is the provider that Apple is using is just not going to do it anymore. I reckon that's what's going on.
01:22:52 ◼ ► But that would be something to watch out for if that is the case. But yes, if you have a credit card, it won't work. You need to use a debit card now.
01:22:57 ◼ ► And Lonny asks, "What are some of your favorite iOS games?" Now Jason I have a list. Can I just read my list and then because I reckon I'm going to pick up what you would have in your list as well.
01:23:09 ◼ ► Great. Because I have a folder on my iPhone that just has some of my favorite games in it of all time because I still play them.
01:23:15 ◼ ► So I will put links in the show notes to all of these. So these are some of my favorite iOS games of all time.
01:23:19 ◼ ► Threes, Flip Flop Solitaire, Pocket Rum Pool, Stagehand, Alto's Adventure, Alto's Odyssey, and Hold Down.
01:23:27 ◼ ► Alto's Odyssey is probably my all-time favorite. And what's the other one? And Really Bad Chess is good. That's also Zach Gage.
01:23:38 ◼ ► And oh, I'm trying to think. I'm sure there are others. There's a game called Orbital that I still play that's ancient and probably not long for this world.
01:23:48 ◼ ► I don't know. Then again, it's survived this long. Maybe it'll continue that I play on my iPhone.
01:23:51 ◼ ► Oh wow. I'm sure I'm forgetting some really excellent games, but there are lots of great iOS games out there.
01:23:59 ◼ ► So yeah. You covered a lot of them. Threes and Flip Flop and Stagehand is really good. That's true too.
01:24:06 ◼ ► We mentioned Zach Gage earlier on in the episode. And we just like, it was funny to me that we did mention him because three of the games that we've just spoken about Zach Gage made.
01:24:17 ◼ ► I think that he's one of the most talented iOS game makers that's around right now. So great ideas, all perfectly executed.
01:24:32 ◼ ► Yeah. I like, oh, that's it. Super Stickman Golf. I love Super Stickman Golf. It's great. And it's got great network play.
01:24:41 ◼ ► Black Box is a really good game. Fill in the blank text game. It's not what you expect. Mini Metro. Mini Metro I like a lot. I was playing that this weekend and it's soothing because they had endless mode now where you just build train lines in the city.
01:25:05 ◼ ► Another good game. But no, I meant Black Bar. Fill in the blank game. Yeah, so many. And Monument Valley, right? Monument Valley. I love Monument Valley.
01:25:17 ◼ ► All the great games is something you could actually say. No, actually that's not true. But there's a lot of really great games on Switch as well.
01:25:26 ◼ ► I want to actually say that I just started playing a game called Baba is You today. Baba is You on the Switch today. That's a super interesting... just play it. Just try it.
01:25:43 ◼ ► They're all great. The latest one has the most stuff in it. Although I kind of like the simplicity of the earlier versions too. But it's all fun. I haven't played it in a while.
01:25:52 ◼ ► I have friends who still play against each other all the time. And I'm not naming names, but those names would be Dan Morin and Dan Frakes. And Lex Friedman maybe too?
01:26:01 ◼ ► It's a great game. It's not... if you're like, "Oh, golf. Golf is boring." It's not golf. I mean, it's golf.
01:26:09 ◼ ► It's arcade golf and it's extreme weird arcade golf. But it is hilarious and delightful.
01:26:17 ◼ ► And they have a turn-based version where you play against another person. But they've also got a live version, which is great because it's live golf.
01:26:24 ◼ ► And if you can imagine you're in a weird like half zero-G alien environment with walls that stick and stuff and you're playing golf.
01:26:31 ◼ ► And so like you need to shoot your next shot as fast as possible because you're seeing everybody else also hitting their balls as fast as possible to get to the hole.
01:26:40 ◼ ► It's hilarious. It is some of the most fun I've had playing an iOS game because it leads to just ridiculous finishes where everybody's right at the end and who is going to get in first.
01:27:03 ◼ ► That's pretty good too. But that's a more traditional golf game except that it goes on forever.
01:27:09 ◼ ► And there's no score. Well, I mean there's a score but it doesn't matter, which is kind of brilliant.
01:27:14 ◼ ► If you want to send in a question for us to answer on the show, #AskUpgrade would be that. Please tweet those out and they'll go into a document for us to pick from in the future.
01:27:23 ◼ ► Don't forget if you want to get tickets to the Relay FM live show connected at WWDC, you can find a link in the show notes for that Wednesday, June 5th.
01:27:31 ◼ ► Thanks to Borrow and Hollow and Pingdom for their support of this show. You can find Jason online at SixColors.com and TheIncomparable.com and he's @JSNEL, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter.