00:00:13 ◼ ► Pingdom, Care/of, and Luna Display. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason Snow.
00:00:19 ◼ ► Happy, happy Upgrade Day, Myke. I didn't say that it's Monday because, you know, who knows when people
00:00:25 ◼ ► are listening to this. Upgrade Day could be any day. It could be like weeks away, it could be years away.
00:00:31 ◼ ► Do you know people still listen to like really, really old episodes of this show? I take my hat
00:00:35 ◼ ► off to people that do that. Like if you enjoy this show enough that you want to go back to listen
00:00:40 ◼ ► to old episodes, I have great respect for you, but it must be wild to listen to us talk about old news
00:00:45 ◼ ► stories. Yeah, I don't even want to know. I don't want to go back there. No. We must move forward.
00:00:51 ◼ ► Just full of things that we were wrong about. I guess what I'm saying is nobody wants to hear
00:00:55 ◼ ► about that. I guess so. Our #snowtalk question comes from Brian this week. Brian wants to know,
00:01:00 ◼ ► "Jason, what is your 'Desert Island' album?" Myke, you can answer this question. Do I even need to?
00:01:05 ◼ ► You know, it's kind of funny. Didn't we do this? Yes, but you know what? I forgot. Like when I saw this,
00:01:10 ◼ ► I forgot that like it didn't put two and two together that obviously me and you have had a 41
00:01:15 ◼ ► minute discussion about your favorite album. It didn't jump into my head, honestly. I didn't even
00:01:19 ◼ ► think about it until you put the link in the notes. Interesting, yes. I used to do a series, part of my
00:01:24 ◼ ► Inclusive podcast. This was back in 2015 where I brought on a bunch of really interesting people in
00:01:31 ◼ ► our kind of wider podcasting community and asked them, "What is your favorite album?" And Jason
00:01:37 ◼ ► picked Crowded House, the self-titled album by Crowded House. So yeah, so that was a really good
00:01:44 ◼ ► album. I like this pick because it's an album that I have full memories of. So that's the one,
00:01:50 ◼ ► that's still the one you'd pick. It's like not even just your favorite album, but the one album
00:01:54 ◼ ► you'd be happy to listen to forever. I mean, I think that's going to be the easiest answer I
00:02:00 ◼ ► could give. I didn't do the calculation of like, could I cheat and pick like some sort of greatest
00:02:06 ◼ ► hits compilation box set album that's like eight discs or something and all that. And I just
00:02:10 ◼ ► decided I'm not going to go down that path. The best of music compilation box set. That's right.
00:02:17 ◼ ► That's right. All the music on an iPod that I then bring with me, but that's not the question here.
00:02:22 ◼ ► It really is like, what's the desert island? And I'm going to say Crowded House from Crowded House,
00:02:28 ◼ ► 1986. Thank you to Brian for the Snell Talk question. If you would like to send in a question
00:02:35 ◼ ► of any kind for us to open a future episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag
00:02:39 ◼ ► Snell Talk, and it may be included for future selection. So thank you so much to Brian for the
00:02:44 ◼ ► suggestion. We have some follow-up. Foldable phones. It was the week of foldable phones last
00:02:49 ◼ ► week. We picked it as something that we were interested in and turns out the rest of the
00:02:54 ◼ ► internet was as well, which is brilliant. Nice and timely. This was mostly spurred on by the fact
00:03:08 ◼ ► they showed off a prototype of what they think a foldable phone should look like. And it's
00:03:13 ◼ ► completely different, which I love. I love that it's completely different. You know, like the
00:03:17 ◼ ► Flexpie Royale was just a phone that folded in half like a book. But Xiaomi's phone, it's like a
00:03:24 ◼ ► rectangle and you fold the two sides around to make it like a smaller rectangle. I like this
00:03:32 ◼ ► idea because my thinking was you could fold only half of it, right? And then you could have like a
00:03:38 ◼ ► like basically have three different aspect ratios. Xiaomi gave no information about it,
00:03:44 ◼ ► just that this is their idea. And I thought, again, it looked interesting. I don't know how
00:03:50 ◼ ► usable it is, but it looked interesting. And then Lauren Good kind of posted an article about this.
00:03:57 ◼ ► "We've just the best headline that sums up this whole trend. Have phones become boring? Well,
00:04:02 ◼ ► they're about to get weird." And that's, I think, kind of the cool thing about this. Like,
00:04:07 ◼ ► and you, you meant you pulled this out like in your link post on Six Colors. There's going to be
00:04:12 ◼ ► a lot of this stuff that is rubbish that's going to happen in these phones. Oh, yeah. Including like,
00:04:17 ◼ ► what Samsung's about to do. They're about to put a hole in the front of the phone where they just
00:04:20 ◼ ► put the camera. Who knows if that's going to be good or not. But the point is like this year,
00:04:24 ◼ ► maybe next year, there's going to be some stuff that is good, but we're going to go through a lot
00:04:29 ◼ ► of weird to get there. But that's fun and exciting because phones have kind of maybe gotten a little
00:04:34 ◼ ► bit boring. Yeah, we're going to end that period where, and I think this is going to be less true
00:04:39 ◼ ► of Apple because Apple is more careful about this. This is what we talked about last week,
00:04:44 ◼ ► my piece for Tom's Guide about foldable phones and how Apple tends to sit on the sidelines a little
00:04:48 ◼ ► bit until it feels like it's really got a good idea because it doesn't feel that pressure to
00:04:52 ◼ ► be first out the gate with something that's not very good, but is new. But a lot of other people
00:04:58 ◼ ► are going to buy phones that have super weird features in them. And we're going to go through
00:05:01 ◼ ► this cycle for the next year or two, or maybe more, who knows, where everybody's trying out
00:05:19 ◼ ► So you'll end up with even more of the kind of point and laugh products than we usually get.
00:05:32 ◼ ► that's ridiculous." We're going to get a lot of those. And that's what Lauren Goode's really
00:05:36 ◼ ► saying here is there's going to be experimentation. Experimentation is good. There will always be some
00:05:43 ◼ ► company that is willing to make a product based on a feature that is half-baked and impractical
00:05:52 ◼ ► because they feel like it will get them attention. And it will, although not necessarily the good
00:05:58 ◼ ► kind of attention. And that's just, I mean, the tech industry has been doing that, and I think
00:06:01 ◼ ► products in general, but tech in particular, for a very long time. There have been all sorts of
00:06:06 ◼ ► outlandish phones and before that computers. And you look back on some of them and you're like,
00:06:12 ◼ ► "What were they thinking?" And the answer was, "They didn't know what they were thinking. They
00:06:15 ◼ ► just were trying stuff to see." And sometimes you try stuff and it works. And that's why they try it
00:06:25 ◼ ► So the thing is, I completely agree with you. A bunch of companies will just jump on this like
00:06:31 ◼ ► Royale, Royole, and they will make a bad product. But the point, why the technology needs these
00:06:40 ◼ ► companies? Because it pushes the technology forward. If someone's forcing some company,
00:06:45 ◼ ► like some display manufacturer, to make these displays for them, it's at least beginning the
00:06:50 ◼ ► process of going down that road to where it could be a good product. So I think that everybody needs
00:06:56 ◼ ► it as well, because you never know what's going to take off. And it might be some weirdo design that
00:07:02 ◼ ► catches the eye of someone somewhere else and then they make a better version of it. So I like it
00:07:06 ◼ ► because it's interesting. And I applaud these companies for taking these swings, even though
00:07:12 ◼ ► most of the time they end up in misses. But I think 2019, we will remember it, this is the year
00:07:18 ◼ ► of the first flexible phones. Yeah, I draw a line between, there are the companies that are really
00:07:25 ◼ ► trying to do something unique and they fail because the tech's not ready yet and they were
00:07:33 ◼ ► too soon, they were really enthusiastic, but they just couldn't get it together. And then there are
00:07:37 ◼ ► the companies that are just shamelessly shoveling garbage into their phones. Yeah, of course,
00:07:41 ◼ ► because they're just trying to jump on a bandwagon to sell some stuff. And I respect the first group,
00:07:46 ◼ ► although I feel bad for them. And I guess I think you're right in the sense that this is part of the
00:07:51 ◼ ► evolution of technology is that you get this first generation of tech that some manufacturer comes up
00:07:57 ◼ ► with and they sell it, but they know it's not very good and everybody knows it's not very good,
00:08:02 ◼ ► but at least it's new and they'll give it a try. And eventually everybody learns and it gets
00:08:07 ◼ ► refined. I think I might argue that if you didn't have, if you only had the major prestige
00:08:14 ◼ ► manufacturers in the game instead of these smaller companies, that the pace would probably be a
00:08:21 ◼ ► little slower because they might be a little more reluctant to put out something that is nonsense
00:08:25 ◼ ► just to see what happens. And the truth is if Apple were the only one, what would happen is
00:08:32 ◼ ► that nothing would happen for three years and then they would be like, "Ah, now we've got it." And we
00:08:38 ◼ ► wouldn't know whether they'd got it or not because I do think Apple does learn from the mistakes of
00:08:51 ◼ ► those are the ones that are probably the easiest to point and laugh at. But no, I think it's fun.
00:09:00 ◼ ► just be to do nothing and sit on the sidelines while this goes on because that's quite frankly
00:09:05 ◼ ► why they're doing it is they're trying to get you off the sidelines to buy new phones by giving you
00:09:09 ◼ ► shiny new features that you didn't know you wanted and you may not actually need. And that's where we
00:09:16 ◼ ► are with smartphones now, I think. - Jason, I wanted to tell you too, I have a new favorite
00:09:22 ◼ ► iPad stand. I've been holding this one for a bit. I didn't wanna talk about it until I was completely
00:09:28 ◼ ► convinced, but I think I may have found the perfect iPad stand. - Okay, so I've been spending
00:09:37 ◼ ► most of my time with the Viazon stand. I did buy that other stand, the Tabitha that you recommended,
00:09:41 ◼ ► which can get slightly taller, but I don't like it as much because it's more kind of weird and
00:09:46 ◼ ► fiddly to put it in the stand. So here's before we get to this. So I saw your Amazon link in our
00:09:53 ◼ ► shared show document and I went and looked at it and it looks interesting, this stand. But the
00:09:58 ◼ ► question I have is always the question I'm gonna have, which is, does it make the iPad go appreciably
00:10:04 ◼ ► higher? Because the one problem I have with the Viazon stand is as much as I like it and I use it
00:10:10 ◼ ► all the time, it could be higher. It's not the most ergonomically appropriate height on my table.
00:10:16 ◼ ► - Yes, 18 inches from the table. It is wild. I can sit at a table now in perfectly straight and the
00:10:26 ◼ ► iPad is at my eye height with this thing. It's called the ClearLook stand. I found it on Amazon.
00:10:36 ◼ ► the stand is surprisingly stable. I can tap on the screen and look, there is a little wobble,
00:10:42 ◼ ► of course, physics, but it's not anything which makes me concerned that it's gonna fall over.
00:10:47 ◼ ► Putting it in, it's got these, it's got an interesting mechanism. It's kind of like the
00:10:54 ◼ ► Viazon mechanism of clamping on the sides, but it has these two little string things that you pull
00:11:00 ◼ ► on the back of the clamps so it comes out really easily. You can just pull it apart very easily.
00:11:05 ◼ ► Also, because it's much thicker and sturdier, I can actually put my iPad with the smart keyboard
00:11:15 ◼ ► attached to it and fold it around in this stand so I don't need to take it out of the case that I use.
00:11:20 ◼ ► The only thing I have to do, which is slightly frustrating, it's the only frustration that I
00:11:24 ◼ ► have to take the Apple Pencil off the side because otherwise it won't clamp in, but because the base
00:11:28 ◼ ► of it is metal, it just kind of magnetically attaches so it doesn't roll, it's just there.
00:11:33 ◼ ► This, I think, for me is the perfect stand. It's very adjustable. You can turn it left and right,
00:11:40 ◼ ► move it up and down. You can just get it in the right way for you. I'm very, very, very,
00:11:51 ◼ ► I've been using this for a couple of months. Ooh, wow. Okay. All right. All right, Myke,
00:11:59 ◼ ► This is the one. I think this is the one. Because it has all of the stuff that makes the
00:12:05 ◼ ► Vias on good, right? It's nice and adjustable, it's easy to get in and out, but it goes super high.
00:12:11 ◼ ► That's good. Yeah, that's good. Because that's the problem I have, and you mentioned it, which is
00:12:16 ◼ ► ergonomically, right? Ideally, you want your keyboard at a good height for your 90-degree
00:12:23 ◼ ► angle for your elbows and all of that, and then you want the screen to be level with your eyes.
00:12:29 ◼ ► And that's almost always going to be a long way off the countertop. And when I'm standing at the
00:12:36 ◼ ► bar in my kitchen or sitting, the iPad is definitely down. I'm definitely looking down,
00:12:43 ◼ ► which is not ideal for that situation. So, all right, I'll check it out, and I'll report back
00:12:49 ◼ ► and see if I agree or disagree. And now I'll have three iPad stands. I can make like a little
00:12:53 ◼ ► like group picture or something, or surround myself with iPads and just keep turning around
00:13:00 ◼ ► and there's an iPad everywhere I look, something like that. So we got a slightly different take
00:13:09 ◼ ► separate non-video media streaming service that Apple was apparently working on. There was a
00:13:16 ◼ ► report from Cheddar. Cheddar is a kind of BuzzFeed-style business reporting journalism outfit.
00:13:32 ◼ ► but it's reporting on big business stuff, analyst stuff, stock market stuff, things like that.
00:13:36 ◼ ► They reported that Apple is apparently planning a gaming subscription service. They are citing
00:13:49 ◼ ► This is a quote from the article on Cheddar. The service would function like Netflix for games,
00:13:54 ◼ ► allowing users who pay a subscription fee to access a bundled list of titles. Apple began
00:14:00 ◼ ► privately discussing a subscription service of game developers in the second half of 2018,
00:14:16 ◼ ► because they're just not good at it. Also, there is like, well, what happens here? Because this is
00:14:23 ◼ ► obviously not going to be all games. So then it's going to be some games. What games get in? How
00:14:28 ◼ ► does the revenue get shared? Who is deemed good enough to be in this? I don't like the sound of
00:14:42 ◼ ► trying to reformulate what games on iOS look like, because right now what games on iOS looks like is
00:14:50 ◼ ► free to play with in-app purchases of coins and bundles and clothes and features and things like
00:15:00 ◼ ► that. And some people love it. I mean, it works. People love it, but it is also not a really great
00:15:08 ◼ ► experience because then you get kind of nickeled and dimed. And I can see Apple trying to find
00:15:16 ◼ ► another approach. I'm not sure I am convinced. So I appreciate that, but I'm not sure I'm convinced
00:15:22 ◼ ► that this will actually be an approach that solves anything. It's interesting that it's games and not
00:15:30 ◼ ► apps. So the idea here, and they built that new app store with the games tab separate from apps
00:15:36 ◼ ► tab, which is kind of interesting. So Apple really does think of this as a different market
00:15:40 ◼ ► from general purpose apps. The devil is in the details. It is very much like when we talked about
00:15:47 ◼ ► if you do any kind of subscription thing, it's all about the catalog. It's what's in the catalog. So
00:16:00 ◼ ► there's a Mac app subscription service, but it's all in the catalog. Do you use those apps? And,
00:16:06 ◼ ► you know, I've heard mixed things about how that works for developers because people have to use
00:16:11 ◼ ► your apps and your compensation is going to be... You're going to have more users potentially,
00:16:15 ◼ ► but you have lower compensation. So there's lots of questions here, but I can see why Apple is
00:16:21 ◼ ► trying to do this potentially, which is can they give game developers a different way to drop their
00:16:29 ◼ ► games on iOS that is not free to play? And I'd imagine this goes hand in hand with a la carte
00:16:38 ◼ ► sales. That's the other thing that struck me about this is that there are sort of two ways that this
00:16:41 ◼ ► can flow. This can be games that if you're not a subscriber, you have to pay $20 for, or it's games
00:16:47 ◼ ► that are free to play elsewhere, but here you just get unlimited everything. My issue is I like the
00:16:53 ◼ ► proposal that you are pitching, but I don't believe that in the long run it means in-app
00:17:01 ◼ ► purchase will go away even from the games that are in this service. I think that Apple would struggle
00:17:07 ◼ ► to convince a lot of the larger publishers who currently have a free to play model to drop all
00:17:12 ◼ ► in-app purchases because this is a thing in the wider gaming world, like even games that you pay
00:17:17 ◼ ► for that you straight up pay $50 for, try and get you to drop money, like extra money. Sure,
00:17:23 ◼ ► so that's part of the question is do they have a realistic view of that where they've created
00:17:28 ◼ ► guidelines that say you can do DLC packs at a certain level, but what we don't want is you
00:17:35 ◼ ► having coins in order to enable individual plays, which is a mess, right? How do you even begin that?
00:17:42 ◼ ► I look forward over the next week to hearing, next day or two, to hearing from game developers who are
00:17:51 ◼ ► reacting to this with skepticism and/or enthusiasm. I think it's interesting that Apple is trying,
00:17:58 ◼ ► apparently trying this, because it suggests that they're dissatisfied with the current way that
00:18:03 ◼ ► you interact with games on the App Store, which I think is not surprising. But the big picture for
00:18:10 ◼ ► me is like this is another subscription service. It's from Apple, like yet another one. How many
00:18:21 ◼ ► subscription services can one company offer? And here will be another one. I think it's one.
00:18:27 ◼ ► I think it's one subscription service. It's not five. No, this is the kind of report that makes me
00:18:36 ◼ ► much more certain that what Apple wants to do is create a subscription service that offers a whole
00:18:44 ◼ ► bunch of stuff mixed together, including magazines and games and who knows what else. iCloud storage,
00:18:52 ◼ ► maybe music, maybe video. Yeah. I don't think... So they're clearly making five or six different
00:18:58 ◼ ► offerings. I don't think they will sell five or six separate things. There may be a couple of
00:19:04 ◼ ► bundles. There may be one bundle. You can get music and video on their own, or you can get all
00:19:11 ◼ ► of it, which includes magazines and includes games. Because at least to begin with, the
00:19:16 ◼ ► magazines and games stuff is not going to be that large. I don't think they're going to have a huge
00:19:21 ◼ ► offering for either of these because they have to convince larger players in both of those industries
00:19:26 ◼ ► to trust them. And it's like, okay, here's all the money you make right now. We want you to gamble
00:19:34 ◼ ► that away by coming to us. This is exactly what we were talking about with the issue that Apple
00:19:39 ◼ ► was potentially having with the magazine stuff a few weeks ago, right? Like trying to convince
00:19:43 ◼ ► the New York Times to give up the $5 a month that they can get from someone and get a fraction of
00:19:49 ◼ ► $5 a month instead for the hope that they'll make it up in volume. I don't know if Apple,
00:20:03 ◼ ► I just am not sure if I am completely comfortable with a Netflix model for apps and games from
00:20:10 ◼ ► Apple. I don't know if it's the right thing to do. It reminded me of a couple of things that,
00:20:17 ◼ ► like this was the thing that James Thompson was talking about a few years ago. So I'm going to put
00:20:20 ◼ ► in the show notes an article and an episode of Clockwise, episode 64, where James broke this
00:20:26 ◼ ► down because this was like a real thought that he was kind of rolling around at the time. James is
00:20:32 ◼ ► the developer of Peacock about the idea of having an Apple subscription service that is for all apps
00:20:38 ◼ ► and then like a set app where you pay a fee and then based upon your usage, you get an amount of
00:20:47 ◼ ► money, right? The developer gets an amount of money depending on how much the app has been used.
00:21:00 ◼ ► in the form of apps, these sort of wild fever dreams keep me up at night. I live in fear of
00:21:06 ◼ ► the streaming model being applied to software and only making a few pennies every time my apps are
00:21:12 ◼ ► launched." That's a real and I think it's a risk that I understand somebody in James's position
00:21:18 ◼ ► having. Like if you make a even popular utility application which isn't used for hours and hours
00:21:27 ◼ ► every day, what are you going to do? Like it reminds me of like YouTube watch time statistics
00:21:34 ◼ ► where, you know, if you make three minute videos once a week, you are not favored by the algorithm
00:21:40 ◼ ► or by the money making mechanisms. So it pushed all YouTube videos to like 11 minutes long,
00:21:59 ◼ ► our app are going to create some kind of class system where only the very, what they consider
00:22:09 ◼ ► it financially viable for the companies that they put in it, because you can't have thousands of
00:22:13 ◼ ► developers in these because then nobody makes any money. Like I'm really in a lot of different minds
00:22:20 ◼ ► about something like this. Yeah, it's complicated and messy and I'm sure everybody who's involved
00:22:28 ◼ ► with this at Apple, assuming that this story is true, has walked through all of this and they're
00:22:34 ◼ ► trying to figure out the right balance, but it's really tricky and there are lots of questions from
00:22:39 ◼ ► lots of different angles here. Which is why my initial reaction is I appreciate that they're
00:22:45 ◼ ► trying this because they seem dissatisfied in the current state of affairs, as well as seeing
00:22:50 ◼ ► an opportunity here for a service. Which... Well, see, my argument would be if they're doing this,
00:22:56 ◼ ► if one of the reasons they're doing this is because they're unhappy with the problem they
00:23:00 ◼ ► created, then they need to find a better way to fix it rather than just like deeming other people
00:23:05 ◼ ► the joy of maybe getting given some money every month. Well, yeah, I mean, they created it in
00:23:12 ◼ ► large part because of the model they chose, which was very much the iTunes single model for how the
00:23:19 ◼ ► App Store works. But unfortunately, that is how the App Store works. And they didn't create it,
00:23:24 ◼ ► assuming it would go this way. They very much wanted it to be pricier apps and games and stuff,
00:23:31 ◼ ► but that's just not how the world has gone. So this is them trying to solve that problem in a
00:23:39 ◼ ► way, but seeing through the lens of a company that really wants to add services revenue too. So,
00:23:45 ◼ ► yeah, right? It's super fun when you look back and you see the two or three decisions that they made
00:23:50 ◼ ► that seemed so good at the time that resulted in the situation we're in now, right? Where it's like
00:23:56 ◼ ► there were no free apps. It's like, oh, we'll add free apps and then we'll add in-app purchase for
00:24:08 ◼ ► we'll put in-app purchase in free apps as well. Like this was the kind of the things that they
00:24:12 ◼ ► decided to do that then got us to the situation that we're maybe in now. But anyway, before we
00:24:18 ◼ ► move on from this, Yemi Rambo at 9to5Mac also discovered in iOS 12.2 in the beta of 12.2,
00:24:25 ◼ ► a landing page in the news app that references Apple news magazines for Apple news. There are
00:24:32 ◼ ► mentions of the term bundle subscription in this splash screen. And the image on the landing page
00:24:39 ◼ ► shows some publications like Vogue and Bon Appetit, who are large and like is also a magazine called
00:24:45 ◼ ► Shape. Now here's the thing. They're not, okay, they're cool magazines, like great publications.
00:24:50 ◼ ► I think ESPN is in there too. It's definitely not the New York Times and, and you know, Time and,
00:24:57 ◼ ► and you know, maybe some of the magazines you'd really want to put front, but to be honest,
00:25:01 ◼ ► they may have not done deals with any of those magazines. They could just be placeholder images
00:25:05 ◼ ► because this is not a public thing. Yemi just found this. I think it's interesting too, that
00:25:11 ◼ ► people are really jumping on this idea that it's Apple news magazines in one place, but in another
00:25:15 ◼ ► place that's referred to as Apple news. So I'm not entirely convinced that Apple news magazines
00:25:21 ◼ ► is really the name of it. It may just be your Apple news subscription. And the magazines are
00:25:28 ◼ ► there, but it is another subscription that we've been talking about for a while that they seem to
00:25:33 ◼ ► be moving forward with. And it just keeps going where we're seeing these subscriptions in the
00:25:41 ◼ ► works in lots of different places, which makes us come back to that question. What are these? What
00:25:46 ◼ ► is the subscription? Is this the Apple one master subscription? Because nobody, and this is the
00:25:52 ◼ ► thing is there will absolutely undeniably be subscription bundles because there's no way,
00:25:59 ◼ ► like 99%, I'm going to say here, confidence that I have that Apple is going to say, "Oh,
00:26:06 ◼ ► would you like to subscribe to our services? You can subscribe to Apple music. You can subscribe
00:26:10 ◼ ► to Apple video. You can subscribe to iCloud. You can subscribe to Apple news magazines. You can
00:26:16 ◼ ► subscribe to Apple's gaming, whatever it is." How much confusion is there if they have like
00:26:27 ◼ ► incentive to Apple to bundle this because they're paying a credit card processing fee for every
00:26:31 ◼ ► single one of these transactions. So they don't want you to subscribe to six different bundles if
00:26:36 ◼ ► they have them, like six different services. They want you to subscribe to it once because they'll
00:26:40 ◼ ► probably make more money that way. Yeah. So some combination of this. Now they might offer, as you
00:26:46 ◼ ► said, they might offer some of these separately. Yeah. I think the high value ones, music and video,
00:26:52 ◼ ► they will offer them on their own. But everything else that we've been talking about, even including
00:26:58 ◼ ► iCloud, these are like add-ons. These are niceties. They got to add a brand name and say, "This is what
00:27:04 ◼ ► you get." And you get iCloud storage and you get... And it's one of those things where as a somebody
00:27:09 ◼ ► paying for a two terabyte iCloud account, I'm kind of anticipating that some of these services,
00:27:14 ◼ ► I'm just going to get them. Like that I'm already paying them a monthly fee for all of that storage.
00:27:20 ◼ ► I have this suspicion and maybe they'll change the price, but I have this suspicion that they're just
00:27:24 ◼ ► going to say, "Those are the... That the iCloud account things are going to be turned into
00:27:32 ◼ ► a larger bundle of stuff that includes your backup and your photos." Because those are services too,
00:27:38 ◼ ► if you think about it. Like backup, even though we all say iCloud storage, it's like backup
00:27:42 ◼ ► and photos are really two different services that they've bundled together. Really, they could have
00:27:50 ◼ ► separated them. They chose not to. And then you throw in some more and you've got multiple use
00:27:54 ◼ ► cases already going on here. And that to me feels like a more likely scenario that they're not going
00:28:05 ◼ ► And which four bundles do you want to buy? That's also too confusing. So yeah, it'll be interesting
00:28:10 ◼ ► to see how they do it. It feels like this year is going to be fascinating year. Tomorrow as we
00:28:14 ◼ ► record this, Tuesday, January 29th is Apple results for that holiday quarter where they miss...
00:28:32 ◼ ► we know this having spoken about this so many times, the pure amount of money is not important.
00:28:47 ◼ ► expectations. They're going to show a year over year decline in revenue. They're presumably going
00:28:53 ◼ ► to show a year over year decline in iPhone that will be dramatic. They'll have more detail that
00:28:58 ◼ ► we haven't heard yet that is probably going to make people, depending on what they're looking at,
00:29:02 ◼ ► even more concerned about aspects of their business. - And also, for a lot of us, it will
00:29:07 ◼ ► make our brains leak out of our ears when they start talking about headwinds and all that kind
00:29:13 ◼ ► of stuff. But there's going to be a lot of that. - Yes. And this is the quarter where they're going
00:29:17 ◼ ► to stop reporting unit sales. So we won't get any unit sales. So there's going to be more residual
00:29:22 ◼ ► grousing about that. So it's going to be really interesting. So what I'm saying is check back in
00:29:28 ◼ ► episode 231 of the upgrade program where we will discuss the fallout of that because this is all
00:29:34 ◼ ► interrelated and it's kind of fascinating. And we'll see what happens next. But we'll find out
00:29:40 ◼ ► a lot more tomorrow. - My bold prediction here, Jason, is we're not going to get any specific
00:29:46 ◼ ► details, but I think that we're going to come away from the call with a somewhat clearer idea of what
00:29:53 ◼ ► the Apple services story is going forward. - I think you're right. In order to get the scrutiny
00:30:00 ◼ ► off of them about this rather than their kind of typical, "Oh, we got a great pipeline," right?
00:30:06 ◼ ► It was like, "Great, whatever. Fill that pipeline." I think that, yeah, you're right. That was my
00:30:12 ◼ ► thought too. - There needs to be a positive set of headlines. - They're going to do a harder sell on
00:30:17 ◼ ► services where they're like, "We've got in 2019, you'll see us enter new media areas." And even if
00:30:24 ◼ ► they're vague about it because it's Apple, I think they're going to push even harder on services
00:30:29 ◼ ► because services has been their whole thing to counteract slowing iPhone sales. It's been that
00:30:34 ◼ ► way obviously for like four years now they've been talking about it. And of course, they're going to
00:30:39 ◼ ► put their foot on the gas when it comes to services. They will also probably spend a lot of
00:30:43 ◼ ► time on their global geographic breakouts in order to say, "We're doing great in these countries and
00:30:52 ◼ ► these regions to take some of the load off of China." But I think you're right that they're
00:30:57 ◼ ► going to really, really push services even more with some details in order to kind of get everybody
00:31:03 ◼ ► excited and to calm down about what Apple's doing next. - This episode is brought to you by Luna
00:31:09 ◼ ► Display, the makers of the hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless display for your
00:31:14 ◼ ► Mac. Have you ever looked at your iPad screen and thought to yourself, "You're a beautiful display,
00:31:18 ◼ ► little iPad. Wouldn't it be amazing if I could use you for even more when I sit down at my Macintosh?"
00:31:23 ◼ ► Well, you can. All you need is a Luna Display. You plug it into your Mac. It's a lovely little dongle.
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00:31:49 ◼ ► but you can also use USB as well if you're somewhere without Wi-Fi, if you don't have a
00:31:53 ◼ ► strong connection. So you'll be able to use your iPad as a second display for your Mac where you
00:31:58 ◼ ► can put... So you're working on something, you're full screen on your Mac. Maybe you're working on
00:32:02 ◼ ► some art, but you still want to maybe see some reference materials. Your iPad is right there
00:32:06 ◼ ► for you to use. It's really wonderful. I absolutely adore my Luna Display that I use with my Mac Mini.
00:32:17 ◼ ► that you cannot do in a web browser and iOS. You just can't do it. But I can do it with my Luna
00:32:24 ◼ ► Display because I just go into my... I open the Luna Display app and I have a Mac there for me
00:32:29 ◼ ► to use. So like for example, stuff with YouTube. So if I want to create a playlist for a YouTube
00:32:37 ◼ ► channel, you can't do this stuff on iOS. Even in an app, you can't do it in the web browser,
00:32:42 ◼ ► you can't do it anywhere because it just doesn't work. But I can do it with my Luna Display.
00:32:46 ◼ ► So I love Luna Display. It works so seamlessly. I often forget that I'm not using a Mac or that
00:32:54 ◼ ► I'm not using something native and I just find myself using the Luna Display for like 30 minutes
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00:33:16 ◼ ► promo code upgrade at checkout. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and relayfm.
00:33:22 ◼ ► So I actually did this this morning. I was moving some things around from my Apple Notes to Google
00:33:27 ◼ ► Docs, right? And on iOS, you lose all your formatting, but you don't when you're on the Mac.
00:33:33 ◼ ► So I just went in and I moved something from my notes document, like a bullet list from my
00:33:41 ◼ ► notes with my Luna Display app instead because I kind of just forgotten what I was doing.
00:33:47 ◼ ► So I'm just sitting there just doing it on the Mac instead via my iPad. It was beautiful.
00:33:52 ◼ ► So Jason, it is that time of year again where you have assembled a meeting of the minds
00:33:58 ◼ ► to create the 2018 Apple report card, the scorecard. Jason, what is this project that you
00:34:17 ◼ ► When I started Six Colors and he emailed me and he said, "I have had this idea where somebody asks
00:34:24 ◼ ► a bunch of people to rate Apple on a bunch of different categories, and then you do it every
00:34:29 ◼ ► year. And basically, I'm not going to do it, but you could do it." And I thought, "Okay,
00:34:34 ◼ ► that's a good idea. Let's do that." And it's kind of a lot of work because you got to compile a list
00:34:40 ◼ ► and you're going to ask people and then you got to check and see that nobody actually responded.
00:34:46 ◼ ► and remind people because it's happening over the holidays at the end of the year and everybody I'm
00:34:51 ◼ ► asking is very busy doing their own stuff. And then in the end, you get back not only their
00:34:56 ◼ ► votes, which is how the report card is compiled, but there's a little field for people to put in
00:35:01 ◼ ► their thoughts. And some people put in lots and lots and lots of thoughts. So I ended up with
00:35:04 ◼ ► 30,000 words of thoughts from people. And I end up pulling out little quotes here and there,
00:35:13 ◼ ► and I leave the rest of it because it's just too much. It's great color and I'm glad that
00:35:29 ◼ ► a more extended verbatim replies later depending on how people feel about that. But for now,
00:35:37 ◼ ► basically the idea is how do people who spend a lot of time thinking about and observing Apple,
00:35:52 ◼ ► And also that gives me the opportunity to compare that now to previous years and see sort of how
00:35:59 ◼ ► people are feeling. So it's not scientific or anything like that. It is what I don't want.
00:36:06 ◼ ► I keep expecting that somebody is going to complain about it and say, this is dumb. This
00:36:11 ◼ ► is just what the commentators think. It's like, yes, that's the entire point is what do the
00:36:17 ◼ ► commentators think? What do the people who spend a lot of time thinking about Apple and its business,
00:36:21 ◼ ► what are they feeling about Apple from year to year? So it's a kind of a group, a summary
00:36:28 ◼ ► report card about the general drift of sentiment about Apple from this year, 55 people who write
00:36:38 ◼ ► and talk and in some cases work with Apple or for, it's a pretty good group. There's a list at the
00:36:47 ◼ ► end. So that's the idea is we're trying to get a sense of the sentiment of how was Apple's year
00:36:52 ◼ ► and how did that change from the year before? And maybe are there any trends over time?
00:36:56 ◼ ► And that's really the goal of it. It's not a definitive anything. Also, I don't vote in the
00:37:08 ◼ ► - So we're gonna go through the categories. We're gonna talk about the scores, how they've changed,
00:37:15 ◼ ► and then me and you can discuss them. And we have some quotes as well that we've pulled out
00:37:20 ◼ ► of the article so we can add more color as you would say to this now to this. So we'll go in
00:37:28 ◼ ► order of the article itself. So we'll start with the Mac. The Mac got an overall B minus grade,
00:37:39 ◼ ► summed this up quite beautifully with the word roller coaster as it's been for 2018 with the Mac.
00:37:45 ◼ ► And I mean, really this all kind of came to head in October, I think. By that time, we'd assumed
00:37:55 ◼ ► we were gonna see everything we're gonna see this year. Whatever came out in the October event,
00:38:00 ◼ ► that was the end of it. And there was a lot tied up in the hopes and dreams for it. Like,
00:38:05 ◼ ► what is the cheap laptop? Will there be a Mac Mini? Will we maybe get a surprise about the Mac Pro?
00:38:14 ◼ ► I think part of the roller coaster is there were 10 months of speculation about the Mac and waiting.
00:38:21 ◼ ► And basically all of our answers came in October. And there was a lot of praise in the article for
00:38:28 ◼ ► the Mac Mini, but cause of it being a little too late for the MacBook Air and whilst being a good
00:38:34 ◼ ► computer is too expensive. And I think expensive is a theme throughout the entire scorecard,
00:38:41 ◼ ► the report. I mean, everybody knows this. And there's also lineup confusion from Christina
00:38:46 ◼ ► Warren. She says, I honestly don't know why the 13 inch MacBook Pro with touch bar is even being sold.
00:39:00 ◼ ► all of it in cause she wrote a lot. She was, it was great. She said the other challenge is that
00:39:09 ◼ ► their competitors, you know, on the PC side at the low end, and she works for Microsoft
00:39:14 ◼ ► and developer relations, but I do trust her judgment. She points out that there are a lot of
00:39:19 ◼ ► premium feeling laptops on the PC side that are way cheaper than what Apple is selling. Now,
00:39:29 ◼ ► they're in a very weird place given the widening gulf between what Apple charges and what its
00:39:39 ◼ ► Yeah. That is probably similar to what Apple prices. That's the thing. It's the, it's the,
00:39:44 ◼ ► it's the ASOS of the world that are, that are not charging a thousand for something, but instead
00:39:49 ◼ ► charging 600. So Gabe Weatherhead says the Mac quality is slowly turning back towards something
00:39:55 ◼ ► Apple can be proud of. Do you agree with that statement? Uh, yeah. I mean, I think one of the
00:40:05 ◼ ► uh, in 2016 are still kind of reverberating. When you say MacBook, do you mean all laptops?
00:40:11 ◼ ► I mean all the Mac, all the MacBooks, all the laptops. Um, I think it's fair to say that if
00:40:18 ◼ ► you took them out of the equation, which some people said is like, let's leave that aside for
00:40:21 ◼ ► a second. And the rest of the Mac stuff is pretty great. And even within the MacBook line, there
00:40:29 ◼ ► are people who are very focused. It's it, there's definitely a split between people who are like,
00:40:35 ◼ ► it seems like this third generation keyboard has solved a lot of the major problems. And now it's,
00:40:40 ◼ ► yes, there are ones that fail, but it's much less common. And then there are other people who are
00:40:43 ◼ ► saying, Oh no, it's still a disaster. And that's just a matter of perspective, a matter of who's
00:40:48 ◼ ► got what information. I don't know. But some people, some people feel like at the very least
00:40:53 ◼ ► the MacBook line is turning around even if they haven't solved all the problems yet. And that
00:41:04 ◼ ► uh, to solve. Cause I mean, all of us, I think, uh, perceive that MacBook Air as being a product
00:41:10 ◼ ► that exists because they didn't get it right in 2016, that they thought the MacBook Air was going
00:41:15 ◼ ► away and, um, it didn't because of all the issues that they had. And so that maybe that's a positive
00:41:21 ◼ ► sign too. So there's definitely some feeling, some sentiment that, um, Apple is addressing this issue,
00:41:27 ◼ ► but slowly addressing their, their hardware quality slowly. And there's more hardware talk
00:41:31 ◼ ► later in the survey. I think that among all the categories, uh, for people that respond to a
00:41:38 ◼ ► survey and also listeners for this show, this is the category that the most is to play for in 2019,
00:41:45 ◼ ► the Mac. Yeah. I will say the Mac, you know, the Mac went up half a point. It did, it did go up
00:41:50 ◼ ► from a C to a B minus and that was, and that was down to the Mac mini and the MacBook Air.
00:41:57 ◼ ► I mean, Mac mini, I think especially, right. Everybody loves the Mac mini. No, no. I, you know,
00:42:02 ◼ ► the, the, the MacBook Air, uh, still has some questions about it, right? Like it still suffers
00:42:09 ◼ ► from the keyboard, right? If you don't like the keyboard, well, you're out of luck cause it's the
00:42:13 ◼ ► same keyboard that's on the MacBook pros probably or similar enough. Uh, and it's highly priced. But
00:42:19 ◼ ► my thinking is right with this one, with the statement that I made there is this is the year
00:42:24 ◼ ► for the pro stuff. So we're going to see the Mac pro or we should, could be, probably should be
00:42:32 ◼ ► iMac pro updates. And are they going to do anything with a MacBook pro? Yep. Like that,
00:42:39 ◼ ► that, and those three products probably matter the most to this in the group of individuals
00:42:44 ◼ ► that you're speaking to. Because even if they don't buy these products, they understand the
00:42:50 ◼ ► importance of them, right? That like, if you really kill it on the pro side, everyone's going
00:42:55 ◼ ► to benefit over the next few years because the technology will trickle down. Um, and so I'm,
00:43:01 ◼ ► I'm really keen to see what Apple addresses in June, because that's the time when if we're going
00:43:07 ◼ ► to see anything, we'll probably see all of this at WWDC, even if it's not for sale, right? Like,
00:43:12 ◼ ► this is when they will talk about it because this is the market that they're selling those products
00:43:15 ◼ ► to. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, I'm not entirely convinced of what is influencing the opinions of
00:43:22 ◼ ► this group in terms of the Mac, but definitely there were positive things in the Mac this year,
00:43:31 ◼ ► So move on to the iPhone, which I think naturally is down from an A grade to B plus this year.
00:43:39 ◼ ► I don't think it ever would have been possible for Apple to kind of maintain the performance year
00:43:44 ◼ ► over year because I will tell you that if you look in the history of the survey, um, the, the tick
00:43:50 ◼ ► tock, uh, approach to iPhone models is in the survey too. If you have a major year with a major
00:43:58 ◼ ► change, the score is a lot higher than in the off year where there aren't as many changes. Now you
00:44:03 ◼ ► could say with the 10 R there actually, this was not quite the same kind of thing, but, uh, it's,
00:44:09 ◼ ► it's certainly you lose, um, you're, you're going to go down year over year to use financial terms,
00:44:15 ◼ ► uh, just because of that, that the 10 was so exciting. Um, but there's a lot else going on
00:44:19 ◼ ► around the iPhone that people are concerned about. I would make a guess that without the 10 R this
00:44:24 ◼ ► grade would have been lower. Yes. I think, I think absolutely it would have been, there was definitely
00:44:28 ◼ ► a lot of praise for the 10 R in the survey and a lot of complaint about, um, the, uh, the pricing.
00:44:35 ◼ ► So, you know, as well as the pricing, I think probably the main thing that people were feeling
00:44:39 ◼ ► from looking through the report is just that it was a bit of a boring year in most instances.
00:44:45 ◼ ► Um, I like that Shahid Kamal Ahmad, who's a host on remaster here at relay FM says we probably hit
00:44:50 ◼ ► peak iPhone and he might be right. Like the iPhone 10, like that's probably going to be it for a
00:44:57 ◼ ► while, right? Like as, as like, wow, that was an incredible year. It's like, okay, feel that because
00:45:04 ◼ ► we're probably in for this design and this style for, for quite a few years. Right. Which is how
00:45:09 ◼ ► we saw with the iPhone six. Um, I expect that our iPhones are going to look and act very much like
00:45:15 ◼ ► the 10 probably for the next three years, at least, um, because there's only so much that Apple is
00:45:22 ◼ ► willing to or can do. Right. Right. Federico Viticci thinks that Apple is losing their advantage
00:45:28 ◼ ► in mobile photography and quickly. What do you think about that? Well, this is the, this is the
00:45:33 ◼ ► question about, um, about the camera and my Mac world piece last week was about that too. And I
00:45:41 ◼ ► actually, I actually referenced Federico. I said, some people I know say that the iPhone doesn't
00:45:46 ◼ ► have the punch that the pixel three has soured on, on smart HDR. We've been talking about this
00:45:53 ◼ ► a lot and connected recently, unconnected people can listen to it there. It's definitely the case.
00:45:56 ◼ ► And then there are other people who, who think, uh, that smart HDR has a lot of advantages in
00:46:03 ◼ ► certain circumstances and then in others, not so much, but I think it's undeniable when you look at
00:46:08 ◼ ► what Google did with night sight, which is something that is entirely. Software. I mean,
00:46:12 ◼ ► yes, there's camera hardware there, but they rolled it all the way back to the original pixel.
00:46:16 ◼ ► So it's the pixel three, two and original pixel all got night sight. And the idea of air is that
00:46:20 ◼ ► that is really smart software that notices you're trying to take a picture in the dark and says,
00:46:25 ◼ ► would you like to use night sight? At which point it does multiple exposures, extended exposures,
00:46:31 ◼ ► uh, does some machine learning processes. It does it all together and makes a picture that looks
00:46:36 ◼ ► like it was shot. Um, if not in the day in a much better lit location than was actually shot. And
00:46:43 ◼ ► the Apple photos are just kind of noisy and dark. And that's an example of Google pushing software
00:46:51 ◼ ► features to improve photography. And that's the kind of feature that I would expect from Apple,
00:46:55 ◼ ► right? I would expect Apple to say, it's too dark. Here, let me help you either by asking or by just
00:47:01 ◼ ► doing, and, uh, Google did it and Apple didn't. And it does show you a sign that although Apple,
00:47:07 ◼ ► it's, it, this is a recurring theme of this survey and of all of 2018, which is this feeling like
00:47:12 ◼ ► Apple continues to push its hardware in lots of amazing ways successfully. And then on the
00:47:17 ◼ ► software side, there's just something missing. I really wonder how much this might be a maps
00:47:25 ◼ ► problem, right? Like I think of this as like a maps situation where Google just got a headstart
00:47:31 ◼ ► and that headstart is gonna keep them with an advantage for a while. And I wonder about what
00:47:37 ◼ ► Apple can do. I mean, they don't have to beat Google, right? They don't have to beat them,
00:47:46 ◼ ► So my gut feeling, and this is based on nothing, and I'm sure there's somebody working at
00:47:50 ◼ ► photography at Apple who would deeply disagree with this, but my gut feeling as an outsider
00:48:00 ◼ ► and Apple still is carrying around some cultural baggage about the fact that professional
00:48:07 ◼ ► photographers use iPhones. Historically, their audience is people who are designers and
00:48:13 ◼ ► photographers and other people in professional creative spaces. And as a result, Apple continues
00:48:20 ◼ ► to be focused on color gamut and on having the most accurate photo instead of the most pleasing
00:48:28 ◼ ► photo. - Right, that these photos aren't real, right? And that they want real. - Exactly,
00:48:32 ◼ ► exactly. And the problem with that is most of the iPhone audience is not somebody who cares about
00:48:48 ◼ ► but that's my theory is that Night Sight doesn't exist on iPhones, not because Google got some kind
00:48:55 ◼ ► of a head start in terms of this technology, 'cause Apple's been doing software massaging
00:48:59 ◼ ► of photos for a long time. They don't talk about it, they don't put it in your face as much as
00:49:02 ◼ ► Google does. They just have it be magic like Smart HDR is, but there's something missing where
00:49:08 ◼ ► they're like, "No, we don't wanna do that. We don't wanna get in their way. We don't wanna take a
00:49:12 ◼ ► photo that doesn't look real. And so we're just gonna let it go." And that's Smart. The Night
00:49:17 ◼ ► Shot thing is the one where I look and I go, "I think you missed it." I think if you're Apple,
00:49:22 ◼ ► you missed the application there, which is if somebody is in a bar with their friend and they
00:49:27 ◼ ► wanna take a shot, they want it to show up and look good, even if it's not well lit, even if it's not
00:49:32 ◼ ► accurate, they want it to look good. And Google nailed that and Apple, I am convinced could have
00:49:37 ◼ ► done it and chose not to. Maybe they didn't think of it, or maybe they actually chose not to. But I
00:49:43 ◼ ► think that this is like an entire podcast episode in a nutshell, but I do wonder if that is behind
00:49:48 ◼ ► some of Apple's decisions here where Google doesn't care, they're just making crowd placing decisions
00:49:53 ◼ ► and Apple cares, which is getting in its way. Which again, if you're somebody who cares about
00:49:58 ◼ ► what Apple cares about is great. I just question in a broad consumer product like the iPhone,
00:50:04 ◼ ► whether that might be the wrong approach to take. - So I think the discussion around price was
00:50:12 ◼ ► probably most keenly felt in the iPhone category. So Alin Sim says, "Apple needs to reevaluate its
00:50:18 ◼ ► market strategy. Their current pricing is cost prohibitive for many people." And Merlin Mann
00:50:24 ◼ ► says, "I feel like the iPhone's price umbrella is developing some copious holes." - Yeah, I mean,
00:50:30 ◼ ► that's definitely one of the big stories of last fall is that people are increasingly uncomfortable
00:50:35 ◼ ► with Apple's pricing, especially on the iPhone. - And could, we don't know, could have been part
00:50:40 ◼ ► of the issue that led to them not getting where they wanted to be with the iPhone sales. - Yeah,
00:50:45 ◼ ► we don't know. - So moving on to the iPad, A minus, no change. I think this one is very simple,
00:50:50 ◼ ► amazing hardware, nothing on software. I don't remember what I graded it as when I gave you my
00:51:01 ◼ ► how I graded it, but it was because of this. I just think that this is the best iPad hardware
00:51:07 ◼ ► that's ever been made, but the software just did nothing and it needs to do something. So
00:51:13 ◼ ► Carolina Milanese says, "The biggest issue Apple has is perception of whether or not the iPad Pro
00:51:18 ◼ ► is as good as a computer. Mostly that perception is driven by software rather than hardware."
00:51:23 ◼ ► Which is, they did some interesting hardware stuff, they put USB-C on it, but all the discussion
00:51:28 ◼ ► was around the fact that you couldn't access an external hard drive, whether people actually
00:51:32 ◼ ► need to do that or not is not the point, but it showed holes in the iPad. - Yeah, unsurprising.
00:51:40 ◼ ► One of the things that I've noticed is these surveys are a measure of the vibe, the overall
00:51:47 ◼ ► vibe. And while they're individual outliers, what we're really doing here is saying this was the
00:51:53 ◼ ► overall vibe of 2018. And it's clear that the iPad, that was the takeaway was, I think what I said,
00:52:03 ◼ ► and I've seen it in a couple other places as well, the hardware is willing, but the software is weak.
00:52:07 ◼ ► That's basically it. This is spectacular hardware and everybody's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
00:52:12 ◼ ► And in a year where you would expect maybe the iPad with the iPad Pro, and I will point out,
00:52:17 ◼ ► and I think some people maybe forgot about this, that sixth-generation iPad that's cheap,
00:52:21 ◼ ► which is a great deal. And a few people mentioned it and I'm very glad that they did because
00:52:30 ◼ ► - I had several people say the best deal in Apple's entire portfolio, Stephen Hackett is
00:52:36 ◼ ► quoted in the story, but a couple of people said that. If you put that together, you think this is
00:52:40 ◼ ► a really banner year for the iPad and yet its score, its average actually went down about a
00:52:45 ◼ ► 10th, but it's basically the same score as it was a year ago. Why is that with great new iPad Pro
00:52:50 ◼ ► hardware and the new iPad? And the answer is the software because Apple chose to take the year off
00:52:55 ◼ ► in terms of the iPad and it hit them because the software, the iPad software story in 2018
00:53:06 ◼ ► the quote from Federica. Federica Viticci says, "Apple needs to devote plenty of attention to
00:53:16 ◼ ► foregone conclusion, right? That iOS 13 has a huge iPad focus purely because of this hardware.
00:53:22 ◼ ► You would be a extremely disjointed company if you created hardware of this caliber without
00:53:31 ◼ ► beefing up the software, right? Like at that point, you feel like a PC manufacturer, right?
00:53:36 ◼ ► Where it's like the hardware and software don't interact. It's just, we make amazing hardware
00:53:42 ◼ ► and hope that Microsoft will do something to Windows to make it more desirable to people.
00:53:49 ◼ ► Because this is so good, but literally nothing changed that was specific. Like there are still
00:53:57 ◼ ► bugs in like the Files app that were in iOS 11, right? And so you would, I have my expectations
00:54:06 ◼ ► are set very high for the iPad with this coming WWDC, but I do also feel confident that we will
00:54:15 ◼ ► see something. Like I feel confident about that just because I, you know, it's like everybody in
00:54:22 ◼ ► this, again, I'm sure you would agree, right? Like I feel like I have observed enough about Apple
00:54:26 ◼ ► over time to see the seeds being planted, right? That like you would not make the next, this current
00:54:34 ◼ ► iPad so good if you were not going to do more with it. Especially with Photoshop coming.
00:54:40 ◼ ► - No, it is as we speculated at the time, possibly one of the great examples of seeing the
00:54:47 ◼ ► effect of Apple's longer lead time for hardware design. And that if we believe all of the reports,
00:54:55 ◼ ► you know, this hardware was in obviously in the designs pipeline for a while. And early last year,
00:55:04 ◼ ► there were reports that Apple had decided to take its foot off the gas in terms of iOS and Mac OS
00:55:10 ◼ ► in order to focus on stability and getting the old iPhones to work better and you know, all of
00:55:17 ◼ ► that stuff. And I think it's very hard not to read that as they knew this hardware was coming. They
00:55:24 ◼ ► were going to do software to take advantage of it. And they decided that they couldn't do that
00:55:29 ◼ ► because they needed to get their house in order. They needed to increase stability, make the old
00:55:33 ◼ ► phones work better. And so they chose to focus on that and let the iPad kind of twist in the wind
00:55:37 ◼ ► for six months. And that's where we are right now. So hopefully they will pivot to an iPad year
00:55:45 ◼ ► in 2019. But that seems to be the story here. And it in what otherwise I think would have been
00:55:52 ◼ ► a banner year for the iPad. It's why everybody kind of is, you know, it didn't go down, but it's
00:55:59 ◼ ► like people felt really mixed. Like it should be great, but and there's this big question mark
00:56:04 ◼ ► hanging over the whole thing. So yeah, we'll see 2019. We have yet to get to the best performing
00:56:10 ◼ ► product category. We're going to do that just after we take a break and thank Care/of for their
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00:58:16 ◼ ► AFM. Vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin, vitamin,
00:58:22 ◼ ► vitamin, vitamins. I feel like that's one of the words I can't let go, vitamin. I feel like that's
00:58:45 ◼ ► Okay, anyway, as we learn from the upgrade is people love the Apple Watch Series 4 and the
00:58:55 ◼ ► Apple Watch scored an A grade for this year up from an A-. It wasn't the biggest jump of any
00:59:03 ◼ ► category, but it is the highest scoring category, right? There is no other straight A grade across
00:59:10 ◼ ► the board. Yes, highest scoring category and I'll point out that it was the highest scoring overall.
00:59:17 ◼ ► It was the highest scoring obviously in the five main Apple product categories. When I started
00:59:22 ◼ ► doing this survey in 2015, it was by far the lowest scoring in all of those categories and
00:59:30 ◼ ► has progressively improved every single year. So people have come around on the Apple Watch.
00:59:36 ◼ ► There's some great quotes for this one that I think perfectly sum it up. So Christina Warren
00:59:41 ◼ ► says, "Honestly, after a very shaky start, the Apple Watch has become one of the most consistent
00:59:46 ◼ ► and exciting products in Apple's lineup. It's best in class and keeps getting better." Federica
00:59:51 ◼ ► Vittucci called it the highlight of the year and Charles Arthur says that adding the ECG function
00:59:56 ◼ ► to the Apple Watch Series 4 is very clever. Only good stories come out of it, which I can 100% agree
01:00:02 ◼ ► with. Nothing bad comes out of having that and you end up with more of these stories, which Apple
01:00:08 ◼ ► loves for good reason of, the Apple Watch saved my life. You cannot have better marketing for your
01:00:15 ◼ ► product than stories of it literally saving the lives of its users. Right? It writes itself. It's
01:00:22 ◼ ► perfect. Of course, this isn't everything, right? So Frasier Spears pointed out something like,
01:00:28 ◼ ► I think reminded me of a complaint when the Apple Watch came out with, is it version five of Watch
01:00:35 ◼ ► OS? I think it's Watch OS 5, right? Yes, Watch OS 5, yes. Because one of the Apple Watch has got
01:00:41 ◼ ► two versions, didn't it, of Watch OS. Yes, yes. The original, they turned it over very fast. Yes,
01:00:47 ◼ ► because they realized how people actually want to use the product was not the way that Apple
01:00:56 ◼ ► inconsistent elements and could use a bit of fresh thinking. And then we have two quotes from
01:01:02 ◼ ► developers. So from Marco Ahmet, Watch OS's limitations on third-party apps and our inability
01:01:07 ◼ ► to develop third-party watch faces still hold us back from taking full advantage of the excellent
01:01:12 ◼ ► hardware. And from James Thompson, it's time to unlock UI kit apps for third-party developers,
01:01:17 ◼ ► so we can finally take advantage of it all for ourselves. I mean, I like this because it's like,
01:01:28 ◼ ► know they can do more to make it even better than it currently is, which I think only spells good
01:01:33 ◼ ► for the Apple Watch, right? Like people love it already, but there is still untapped potential.
01:01:39 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly right. And I choose to be encouraged by the fact that the developers in the panel
01:01:46 ◼ ► basically said, we want to use this more. Well, cause I think that wasn't the story a couple of
01:01:52 ◼ ► years ago. It was like, it was nice, but they weren't like hungry for it. But now I think
01:01:56 ◼ ► developers won it. And they tried, they tried and it was no good. And they're like, forget it. And
01:02:00 ◼ ► now it seems like they are interested in unlocking that power now that they've seen what the new
01:02:07 ◼ ► watch is capable of, which is exciting. And I'm glad that Frasier Spears mentioned that the watch
01:02:13 ◼ ► faces, which I wrote a thing about and we've talked about, which is that inconsistency of
01:02:17 ◼ ► watch faces is also something that people brought up that the, uh, John Gruber mentioned it. I don't
01:02:22 ◼ ► think I quoted him, but like the new faces only work on the new watches and the old faces only
01:02:26 ◼ ► work like design wise work that you can put them on the, the old faces on the new watches, but they
01:02:31 ◼ ► don't really make sense. And there's a need for a real rethink of how it does faces, which I'm
01:02:43 ◼ ► it is one of the, I, I go back and forth between the two, um, new faces, the two infographs. I go
01:02:51 ◼ ► back and forth between them and I'm not happy with either of them. I would really much rather
01:02:54 ◼ ► have a more capable version of modular, which was my favorite, but modular, I grew a Gruber
01:03:00 ◼ ► modular on the big watch face, what they did to it. Like it doesn't, it doesn't work. So I'm mostly
01:03:05 ◼ ► on the analog hand infograph face and I have the, um, other infograph face right next to it. So I
01:03:12 ◼ ► can swipe to it if I want more data and I I'm sort of doing a two face lifestyle now. Hmm. That's
01:03:17 ◼ ► weird. That's like a Batman villain. And we move on to the forgotten product, the Apple TV. Uh,
01:03:23 ◼ ► it is D plus down from a C this is not a surprise because this is a product in limbo. It's the iPad.
01:03:32 ◼ ► I mean, the hardware is an amazing, but the hardware exists for software that doesn't exist
01:03:36 ◼ ► yet. It is waiting for the streaming service. It is waiting. Um, you know, like Fraser Speer says
01:03:42 ◼ ► stagnant. June Darable says there's a lot missing. Christina Warren says the price is ridiculously
01:03:47 ◼ ► high and it is compared to competitors because the Apple TV in 2019 and 2018, all it does is what,
01:03:56 ◼ ► what the fire TV does, what Chromecast does the future of TV apps. No, it's not. That was wrong.
01:04:03 ◼ ► And Apple tried and to make a box which could have capability to play games on it and stuff,
01:04:09 ◼ ► they needed more power and nobody uses it by and large. It is a, that was a miss. That was a swing
01:04:15 ◼ ► and a miss from Apple. Um, so I think not only this year, will we see, uh, obviously the, the,
01:04:26 ◼ ► we may well see a better focused, cheaper device. Um, we'll see, or maybe Apple just completely goes
01:04:34 ◼ ► down the route of trying to get their services everywhere as opposed to releasing something
01:04:37 ◼ ► cheap themselves. Um, but I think it would be remiss of them to try and at least give it a go
01:04:43 ◼ ► to create just something that plugs directly in the back of the TV that you could sell for,
01:04:52 ◼ ► Poor Apple TV. Um, so we're out of the hardware and let's talk about Apple's favorite category,
01:05:04 ◼ ► as you mentioned in the article is a mixed bag, which seems mostly kind of just like informed
01:05:16 ◼ ► people's view of Apple and cloud services was, um, I think much, it was much more negative.
01:05:23 ◼ ► Um, but even then there was the sense like that Apple was getting it together. And I think if you
01:05:28 ◼ ► look back five, six, seven years and how everybody thought about Apple services and how they think of
01:05:33 ◼ ► them today, um, like Apple services are way, way better. They have come a long way in, in the last
01:05:40 ◼ ► few years, they're far more reliable. Um, I am struck by the fact that there are definitely
01:05:46 ◼ ► people on the panel who will never forgive Apple for what they were like seven years ago in cloud
01:05:53 ◼ ► services and will never trust Apple. And that's, I think it's interesting to look at the long
01:06:01 ◼ ► memories of people who've used Apple's cloud services. Like I had somebody say, um, I will
01:06:07 ◼ ► never trust, uh, Apple's photo syncing service. And I've been using Apple's photo syncing service
01:06:14 ◼ ► since they launched the photos app. And I think it's great, but that person had a bad experience
01:06:21 ◼ ► and will never come back or it will take them a very long time. And I think that's part of
01:06:25 ◼ ► Apple's challenge with a lot of their services stuff is they're, um, they're still trying to
01:06:30 ◼ ► live down the past. This is the, um, down a little bit from last year, this score, but it's higher
01:06:36 ◼ ► than the two previous years. So I think there is this sense that like people are not super trust,
01:06:41 ◼ ► trusting of Apple in terms of services, uh, begrudgingly acknowledging that they've gotten
01:06:46 ◼ ► better, but that there are lots of, uh, issues still. Um, and there are a lot of different
01:06:51 ◼ ► services too. So I think a lot of people lumped Siri in here to say that Siri, like they liked
01:07:01 ◼ ► the, it's a, it's a mixed bag for sure. But I think it's interesting that Apple is clearly
01:07:04 ◼ ► making progress and yet not necessarily winning everybody over. Anything that touches the internet,
01:07:10 ◼ ► right? That's the services. And I just think that they're not, there's a lot of places that they are
01:07:16 ◼ ► not doing a great job in that for right. Like, yeah, I, if I had to say there's an overarching,
01:07:21 ◼ ► uh, comment, it would be that Apple is trying to do a lot and it's unclear what level of focus
01:07:28 ◼ ► in general, but especially in services, what level of focus they have on the individual products.
01:07:32 ◼ ► Like, you know, is for a company that has saying services are the future. I think there's an
01:07:38 ◼ ► overall feeling that maybe it feels like a lot of Apple services are not a focus and do not improve.
01:07:45 ◼ ► Whereas Google is iterating their services for one example, all the time is the perception and that
01:07:50 ◼ ► Apple, uh, will let their services get dusty for a while. And I think that's, but at the same time,
01:07:57 ◼ ► you get something like, um, you know, so Steven Hackett says things are better than ever,
01:08:01 ◼ ► but iCloud sync should be Bulletproof. Dr. Drang said, um, the two terabyte iCloud plan is a
01:08:08 ◼ ► better value than Dropbox. I'm nervous about switching over, but I think 2019 is the year.
01:08:12 ◼ ► And I know people who have dropped Dropbox for iCloud drive, which is amazing. Uh, and I'm not
01:08:20 ◼ ► one of those people, but I get it, but I get it because it is, it is a lot better. And the photo
01:08:26 ◼ ► service I use and it is great. And I have had nothing but good experiences with it. And I think
01:08:32 ◼ ► they do a very good job with it. Um, so it's, it's again, mixed bag, it's all over the place.
01:08:38 ◼ ► And of course, right. This is the thing that you think about, like the, how, how big this,
01:08:42 ◼ ► this is overall, like what, how many issues areas this touches Apple music, right? Jessica
01:08:47 ◼ ► Dennis thinks it's like solidly okay music service, which it is right. It's kind of all
01:08:50 ◼ ► it needs to be, but then Carolina Milanese says, and she brings up a great point, right? You think
01:08:55 ◼ ► about Apple and the services, Apple music and echo devices that happened in 2018, and it shows a
01:09:01 ◼ ► change in Apple that she says playing by different rules going forward. HomeKit got a C minus with no
01:09:08 ◼ ► change. And this one is not a surprise to me. And this one is very mixed in the responses. Uh, I
01:09:14 ◼ ► think there's no change because nothing really happened. Well, it's the highest score HomeKit
01:09:18 ◼ ► has ever gotten by so little that the grade didn't really change. Right. Um, it is, but it is the
01:09:25 ◼ ► highest average score that it's gotten. And this is one of those cases where I was surprised at how
01:09:30 ◼ ► negative the comments are because one, my experience, I would have rated it way higher than
01:09:36 ◼ ► the panel did. The panels medium grade for it was two. It makes me wonder if the panelists split in
01:09:41 ◼ ► two groups, groups that use it and groups who don't bother using it and think it's bad because
01:09:48 ◼ ► HomeKit's gotten a lot better. Yeah. I think one of the big differences is are you in the
01:09:52 ◼ ► United States of America? Well, because the amount of products available to you are very different.
01:09:58 ◼ ► Like, so like Federico says like me, Apple needs to convince me to stay on their platform in 2019
01:10:04 ◼ ► because Google and Amazon are becoming more and more compelling by the day. And it's like, I know,
01:10:08 ◼ ► I look at the, the products that are available to me and there aren't many, like I can see that
01:10:19 ◼ ► companies that you have products from, we don't have. And I'm kind of, as we spoke about, like,
01:10:24 ◼ ► remember a few weeks ago, we're talking about like plugs, plugs that I, and I would love to have a
01:10:28 ◼ ► plug that I could use on HomeKit and on the Echo. And my options were for companies names that I've
01:10:34 ◼ ► never heard of before. Right? I can't get Belkin products with that have HomeKit support. You know,
01:10:39 ◼ ► like a lot of the cameras I can't, I can't use. So, and again, it's like, what can you put in
01:10:45 ◼ ► your home? If you live in a house, maybe you feel a bit differently if you live in an apartment,
01:10:49 ◼ ► right? It's like I can't put security cameras or I can't put the, like the locks that you have
01:10:54 ◼ ► because I don't have the ability to do that. So, you know, it's like, there was a lot of personal
01:10:58 ◼ ► experience that comes from this. Maybe that's the split is there's the split between people
01:11:03 ◼ ► who have, who are in a circumstance where it all has started to work. And I'm in that where like,
01:11:09 ◼ ► it's all started to work now. And I'm like, Oh, HomeKit isn't, is a thing now where it was
01:11:14 ◼ ► previously not a thing. And then if you're in a place, whether it was a geographic location or in
01:11:22 ◼ ► terms of your housing situation where it's still not a thing, then it's still not a thing. And you
01:11:28 ◼ ► get, I just, I was struck by this and I think what says it all about HomeKit is it's the highest score
01:11:33 ◼ ► it's ever received. It's still not a very good score. So like progress yet a lack of enthusiasm.
01:11:40 ◼ ► And as, yeah, as Carolina Milanese said, puzzling, right? Like nothing has been happening for a while
01:11:49 ◼ ► was, is this not a priority for Apple and what's going on? And again, that comes up in a bunch of
01:11:54 ◼ ► areas where we view Apple as this. And I think maybe there's some truth to this. We view Apple
01:11:59 ◼ ► as this enormous and enormously successful company. And sometimes when you look at what
01:12:05 ◼ ► they're doing, you start to wonder if what they really are is a, an enormously successful hardware
01:12:11 ◼ ► design system with a struggling but okay software organization. And then a whole bunch of poorly
01:12:24 ◼ ► funded, poorly staffed, not focused on ancillary businesses where Apple's DNA says we have to own
01:12:34 ◼ ► this and do our own thing, but they refuse to actually prioritize that stuff. And HomeKit's
01:12:39 ◼ ► a great example, right? Where it's like Apple did HomeKit because Apple didn't want to seed
01:12:44 ◼ ► this market to Amazon and Google, but it does feel like Apple also didn't do HomeKit right.
01:12:51 ◼ ► And it's still trying to live it down. And it's unclear that they've actually turned it around.
01:12:55 ◼ ► So they started wrong with their like chip certification, the way that they were doing it
01:12:59 ◼ ► before. But then they changed it, right? iOS 12 changed it. And that's why there are more
01:13:05 ◼ ► products, but like it's going to take more time still. Um, hardware reliability, B plus down from
01:13:12 ◼ ► A minus and oh boy, this is where the MacBook keyboards, this is the effect. This is where it
01:13:18 ◼ ► was. This is where people were talking about it. Um, David Sparks says, I realized recently that
01:13:24 ◼ ► I no longer take Mac hardware reliability for granted, which I like, right? Like I like that
01:13:29 ◼ ► phrase. And then of course, let's, let's, let's run through the ATP boys. So Marco says the
01:13:34 ◼ ► continued problems with the Mac book and Mac book pro keyboards, despite the reductions from 2018
01:13:39 ◼ ► keyboard membrane, tarnish their reputation in a big way. John Siracusa says the butterfly keyboard
01:13:45 ◼ ► really has to go. And Casey says, I'm not calling for anyone's head to roll, but I do think there's
01:13:51 ◼ ► a legitimate problem here that needs to be addressed. This is a sore point. I think it's
01:13:56 ◼ ► telling. So 2016 is really when the new Mac book pros came out, right? Um, the Mac book was out
01:14:03 ◼ ► earlier. I think it's telling that if you look at my, uh, my results over time, Apple's perceived
01:14:12 ◼ ► hardware reliability among the panel has dropped every year. Yep. So this was a 4.4 average in
01:14:21 ◼ ► 2015. It's now a 3.8, not horrible. It's still a B plus, but I do think there's something in the fact
01:14:29 ◼ ► that over the last four years, as the new Mac books rolled out, uh, especially that the perception of
01:14:36 ◼ ► the reliability of Apple's hardware has, uh, has dropped from basically a straight A to a B plus
01:14:43 ◼ ► from a 4.4 to a 3.8. It is to me, meaningful. This is the category they should always score highest
01:15:06 ◼ ► may be telling too, that, um, that even people who feel like, and I had, I had several of them
01:15:13 ◼ ► in the survey, like they, they bank on Apple hardware. They don't have any problems with it.
01:15:17 ◼ ► Even among that group, there's this effect. That's very much what David Sparks said, which is
01:15:22 ◼ ► even if I'm feeling good, there's something wrong because of especially the, uh, uh, the,
01:15:31 ◼ ► the keyboard, but it's, it's more than that. Um, uh, Peter Cohen, my former colleague at Mac world
01:15:37 ◼ ► back in the day, uh, did a nice list, which was iPhone seven's returned in large quantities.
01:15:42 ◼ ► Thanks to manufacturing problems that rendered them unable to work on cellular networks.
01:15:46 ◼ ► Mac book keyboards continue to fail despite three redesigns and Apple stores were choked
01:15:50 ◼ ► with people rushing in to get those batteries replaced. Like these are all signs that are
01:15:55 ◼ ► partly a function of Apple's products popularity, but it's also a function of the fact that
01:16:01 ◼ ► Apple just didn't engineer those products, um, to be reliable enough. So it's definitely,
01:16:07 ◼ ► you know, this is about as much, uh, as much about perception as reality. That's the deal
01:16:12 ◼ ► with a survey, but I can tell you that among people who carefully watch Apple, uh, their
01:16:16 ◼ ► opinion of Apple's hardware has declined in terms of reliability has declined every single year
01:16:21 ◼ ► since I started the survey in 2015. Then on the flip side, software quality went from a C minus
01:16:27 ◼ ► to a B minus and it should have iOS 12, especially. And to a degree, Mojave MacOS, Mojave had a focus
01:16:36 ◼ ► on stability and this showed Charles Arthur says iOS 12 was a great improvement for stability and
01:16:42 ◼ ► speed. Mojave has been a quiet update. I haven't noticed anything from it, but good software is
01:16:46 ◼ ► when you don't notice it. And Federico Vitucci says iOS 12 is the best version of iOS I've
01:16:51 ◼ ► tested in years. The work Apple put into optimizing performance on older hardware truly shows.
01:16:57 ◼ ► Yeah, this is, um, for all of our comments about the iPad, this is the other side of that,
01:17:06 ◼ ► which is they did and people individual, I had individual people with individual gripes
01:17:12 ◼ ► about iOS or Mojave, but on the big picture, I think everybody in the panel pretty much agreed
01:17:17 ◼ ► that last year was shaky. Again, not saying that everything's perfect, but I think what you see,
01:17:22 ◼ ► cause the score was a 3.4. It went down last year to a 2.7 average and back up to a 3.4.
01:17:27 ◼ ► I think what you're seeing there is 2017 was really shaky. The feeling was those updates,
01:17:32 ◼ ► iOS 11, uh, especially were shaky and people were like, well, what is Apple doing? There were a lot
01:17:38 ◼ ► of bugs. There were a lot of weird things going on. And when Apple decided we're going to slow it
01:17:43 ◼ ► down and we're going to focus on stability and getting old phones to run better and all of that,
01:17:47 ◼ ► the panel at least felt like they came through and that although there's some frustration about
01:17:53 ◼ ► where they're going and how, how fast they're going to get there, there, there was generally
01:17:58 ◼ ► an acknowledgement that they, it did pay off in focusing on that stuff. Yeah. And, uh, Steven
01:18:06 ◼ ► Hackett points out that he has some concern for the future of MacOS, right? That the apps,
01:18:12 ◼ ► the Marsapan apps are not good Mac apps. And that maybe that is a thought, right? You can think
01:18:20 ◼ ► about that. What do you think about that? That's true. Software quality does include those new,
01:18:25 ◼ ► uh, Marsapan apps in Mojave that are generally not unanimously, but generally thought of by a lot of
01:18:31 ◼ ► people to be inferior. Um, and that that's just an open question, right? Is what does that mean?
01:18:36 ◼ ► Because it's entirely possible that they are just a work in progress and that what the,
01:18:41 ◼ ► what they ship in 2019 will be, um, much better. Uh, it's also possible that no, that's what they
01:18:48 ◼ ► intend to ship. Uh, I don't believe that, but it is an open question. So I, I get the concern for
01:18:54 ◼ ► the future. Um, especially since, to be honest, you know, we're, we're leaving the year of stability
01:19:00 ◼ ► and entering a year of potentially a huge change. And so does software quality suffer in a year of
01:19:07 ◼ ► change? I would argue that it almost certainly does, right? Because it seems to me that the way
01:19:13 ◼ ► that you keep the quality up is by slowing way down and focusing on tightening all the screws.
01:19:18 ◼ ► Um, and 2019 doesn't seem like a screw tightening year, right? It seems like a, add a whole bunch of
01:19:25 ◼ ► new stuff and they're going to be bugs and it's going to be weird. And, uh, it's natural to view
01:19:30 ◼ ► that with trepidation, I think. All right. There are a couple of, of more categories that we'll
01:19:36 ◼ ► round out real quickly, but we'll do that. Um, after we thank our final sponsor for this episode,
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01:20:51 ◼ ► of this show and relay FM. So the last two categories were developer relations and societal
01:20:58 ◼ ► and environmental impact. So developer relations was a B minus down from a B. And I think if I
01:21:05 ◼ ► would like kind of sum it up that review times got faster, but scam apps exist and Apple isn't
01:21:10 ◼ ► seem to really be doing anything about it. Yeah. And this is a category where, um, the fact is in
01:21:15 ◼ ► 2015, when I started this survey, um, maybe much more relations were a, were a real concern. And
01:21:23 ◼ ► that average score in 2015 was 2.2. It was by far the lowest score that any, but the lowest average
01:21:32 ◼ ► that we've ever gotten in anything on the survey, uh, developer relations were at a very low point.
01:21:38 ◼ ► That's also when Phil Schiller took over and started making major changes. And, uh, and that
01:21:44 ◼ ► score came up and has, uh, you know, is now at a B minus. It went down slightly from last year,
01:21:49 ◼ ► but basically it's a, it's a pretty good score. And that's the truth of it is I think developers
01:21:54 ◼ ► are relatively happy. There are, there are issues. Definitely. There's complaint about, um, about
01:22:00 ◼ ► scams and frauds. And John Gruver mentioned that for sure. Um, uh, uh, Lex Friedman mentioned like
01:22:06 ◼ ► panic coming back to the Mac app store was a big one. Um, there's a lot of positive stuff. It's not
01:22:12 ◼ ► a perfect thing. It's always a work in progress. There are everybody's got kind of pet issues that
01:22:16 ◼ ► they wish that Apple would do better. But I think what I take away from the developer relation
01:22:20 ◼ ► category is that today, if I were building the survey and not trying to repeat it every year,
01:22:26 ◼ ► I wouldn't ask this question because I just don't think it's a burning question like it was
01:22:30 ◼ ► in 2015. And that, that is meaningful to me that I think when Phil Schiller took over developer
01:22:36 ◼ ► relation stuff, took over the app store, um, they, they made appreciable changes fairly quickly that
01:22:43 ◼ ► seemed to have solved a lot, not all a lot of the pain that went into it. So that's, I think that's
01:22:49 ◼ ► the most interesting thing about it is just that it's not as relevant as it was, uh, four years ago.
01:22:54 ◼ ► Yeah. I think that was the big change, right? Was, was Phil taken over from Eddie and then things
01:23:00 ◼ ► started to move from there and little things like to get added and over time it has made things
01:23:04 ◼ ► better for everyone. Right. Yep. And the last one is societal slash environmental impact where, uh,
01:23:10 ◼ ► Apple got a B grade down from a B plus. And I think if I was going to sum this up, it would be
01:23:15 ◼ ► that kind of Apple talks a good game in a lot of areas. There's a lot of great stuff, but it seemed
01:23:19 ◼ ► like there was a consistent concern with Apple failing to stand up against the U S government
01:23:29 ◼ ► efforts to change stuff is still moving very, very slowly. Yeah, the definitely there's a sense that
01:23:34 ◼ ► people appreciate, um, that Tim Cook speaks out about lots of issues that the company is focused
01:23:41 ◼ ► on user privacy and security and all of that, but also pointing out that, you know, but then they
01:23:47 ◼ ► also play ball in China where they're going to let China into the data centers and look at the user
01:23:52 ◼ ► data and, uh, that there are places where they, they, uh, talk a good game and then they sit down
01:23:58 ◼ ► with the current administration and they're definitely panelists saying, um, they're going
01:24:02 ◼ ► to regret that historically by, by playing ball with them. Um, again, debatable, everybody's got
01:24:08 ◼ ► an opinion about it. Um, this is another one of those categories that, uh, I think is still
01:24:13 ◼ ► relevant, but the meaning of the environmental and social impact category in the survey has changed
01:24:24 ◼ ► And it's actually something that, um, Dr. Drang mentioned, which is, uh, in the early 2000s,
01:24:30 ◼ ► Apple Greenpeace, especially like call that Apple for its environmental practices. And what's funny
01:24:36 ◼ ► is that they decided to fix that and make a commitment to it. And that slide that they put
01:24:40 ◼ ► up after every product with its green checklist and all that, that is all because Apple really
01:24:45 ◼ ► did over the last 15 years, completely changed its processes to focus on making, um, less of a
01:24:50 ◼ ► negative environmental impact and being a positive impact whenever they could. And that is a place
01:24:55 ◼ ► where they, where they changed. And I think you still see that where in 2015, quite honestly,
01:24:59 ◼ ► the survey was in there because there was a lot of stories in the news about Apple's factories
01:25:03 ◼ ► in China and suicides at the factories and the feeling that the people in the factories were not
01:25:07 ◼ ► being treated well and that Apple was benefiting from the terrible work conditions there. But over
01:25:12 ◼ ► time, it has also evolved to mean other things. It has been about Apple's political connections in
01:25:18 ◼ ► the U S it's about Apple standing up to the FBI. Uh, it was about Apple's diversity on stage or
01:25:25 ◼ ► diversity in its management team, or, um, I quote in the story, Aline and Jean from AppCamp for girls,
01:25:33 ◼ ► talking about their entrepreneur camp for women developers. Um, like there's a lot of stuff that
01:25:38 ◼ ► people can kind of, um, heap into this category, which is why I think it's interesting. I'm not
01:25:43 ◼ ► sure it's consistent from year to year, but I think maybe it's lack of consistency is, uh,
01:25:48 ◼ ► is good in that it shows like, what are people thinking in terms of these intangible things about
01:25:54 ◼ ► Apple? Cause Apple is a company that takes stands and says it believes in things and its executives
01:25:58 ◼ ► go out and make pronouncements. And I think it's worth, uh, so I think that they're calling
01:26:03 ◼ ► by doing that they're, um, opening themselves up to analysis about where they succeed and where
01:26:10 ◼ ► they fail, that a faceless corporation might not, uh, have, there might not be anything relevant
01:26:29 ◼ ► together cause it's so nice to have a record going back. Yeah. I, that is one thing that I,
01:26:35 ◼ ► I really value in it is that it's not just taking the temperature of the, you know, the pundits and
01:26:40 ◼ ► the Apple watchers at any given time, but it's also seeing how their, um, their views evolve
01:26:45 ◼ ► over time. And with the direct quotes, you can get the sense of the, you know, the real like
01:26:50 ◼ ► feelings that everybody's got in detail. And then with the numbers, you can just get an overall
01:26:55 ◼ ► kind of sense of the trends and the sentiment. And, um, again, I don't think it proves anything
01:27:01 ◼ ► per se, but I think it's interesting to see, to get a snapshot of this. And the first year I did
01:27:06 ◼ ► it, I actually did an open version of the survey for people who, um, you know, saw the link on six
01:27:11 ◼ ► colors where they could fill it out before it was published. And I stopped doing that. And the
01:27:15 ◼ ► reason I stopped doing that is, uh, the, the scores were different, but the, the relationship
01:27:21 ◼ ► between the scores were identical. So, you know, it might've been not a 3.4, but a 2.4 and not a 3.9,
01:27:28 ◼ ► but a 2.9, cause all the scores were a little bit lower for the general public, but their relationship
01:27:33 ◼ ► to the pundit survey was the same. And I think honestly that comes out of the fact that
01:27:40 ◼ ► on average as a whole, uh, and this should not be surprising, the people who consume all the content
01:27:47 ◼ ► from the people who think and talk about Apple have their opinions to a certain extent shaped
01:27:52 ◼ ► by those people. So again, not proving anything. Reality may be completely different, but in the
01:27:58 ◼ ► end, I think it's still worth, uh, polling the Apple observers. And I said earlier that I asked
01:28:03 ◼ ► 55 people to be on the panel. That's not actually true. I asked about a hundred people, maybe a
01:28:06 ◼ ► little bit more. Um, many of them don't do it. So these are the 55 people and there's a list at the
01:28:11 ◼ ► end. These are the 55 people who said yes. And so they're the ones in the survey. Um, I gave them
01:28:17 ◼ ► the option to not be quoted. Um, plus people could just not give me feedback. Um, so yeah, which is
01:28:24 ◼ ► fine. I think thanks to everybody who didn't give any quotes, cause going through the quotes is
01:28:28 ◼ ► really hard work, but thanks to the people who did because they provided good, uh, good color,
01:28:34 ◼ ► let's say for, uh, for the, the bare survey results. Jason, before we finish today, I have a
01:28:41 ◼ ► follow-up item for you before we do a couple of ask upgrade questions. It's unorthodox, but I'll
01:28:46 ◼ ► allow it. It's because during the episode today, uh, Apple published a behind the scenes video on
01:28:52 ◼ ► how they made that iPad pro ads. And you can now see that yes, it was LumaFusion that was used to
01:28:58 ◼ ► edit and filmic and filmic pro used to shoot it. So for all of the people that were doubting that
01:29:06 ◼ ► Apple made their videos on the iPad pro, well, they did. You can see it now. Um, and I think
01:29:11 ◼ ► that's really great. I'm really pleased that they decided to show this. Um, obviously it was always
01:29:16 ◼ ► part of the plan because they were filming it. Um, but I'm really pleased to see that yes,
01:29:21 ◼ ► LumaFusion is being used because that was what me and you said. Well, they, they're obviously using
01:29:26 ◼ ► it because that's how you could do this. So there you go. So there you go. Hey, it's your video,
01:29:32 ◼ ► right? You'll ask for it. And there it is. They did do it. Um, the iPad pro is very capable and
01:29:38 ◼ ► very powerful. And I'm very pleased that Apple decided not only make this campaign, but make this
01:29:42 ◼ ► specific video because it proves a point to ask upgrade questions before. So just two lasers,
01:29:49 ◼ ► please, Jason, uh, before thank you before we, uh, finish off today's episode. First one comes
01:29:54 ◼ ► from Matthew. Do you think Apple would create a web version for their video service similar to
01:30:05 ◼ ► a device that supports it. Do you think they'll make a web focused version of their streaming
01:30:10 ◼ ► service? I'm going to say yes. Okay. It's a coin flip for me. I see how much, um, my daughter
01:30:23 ◼ ► watches, you know, Netflix in a browser and stuff. And I feel like, you know, she could,
01:30:33 ◼ ► and Apple could put this in iTunes. I just feel like, uh, that technology exists and why would
01:30:40 ◼ ► you not? Because then anybody who's paying you money can watch it anywhere. And I think that's
01:30:44 ◼ ► probably what Apple wants is to just, uh, I say yes, because of the same reason that it's on TVs
01:30:49 ◼ ► and stuff is that it just gives them another outlet for people to give them money and watch their
01:30:53 ◼ ► stuff. And the, uh, one of the other things is that, uh, a lot of the ways that these smart TV
01:31:04 ◼ ► stuff works, it's all web based, right? So they're already building a, essentially a web player.
01:31:09 ◼ ► Yeah. Like, or at least they are creating what would need to be the underpinnings for a web
01:31:15 ◼ ► based system on the TVs. So, I mean, I don't know how much harder it would be for them to build a
01:31:21 ◼ ► front end, but they may have had to go a lot of the way there themselves. So, and, and also that
01:31:29 ◼ ► really just, it stops them have, and it's probably why Netflix do it too. It stops them from having
01:31:35 ◼ ► to have to support everything because, well, if it has a web browser, you could just watch it.
01:31:40 ◼ ► The apps are better, but you can just get them via the web. And here we go, Jason. This question
01:31:46 ◼ ► comes from John. Now that we're in iPhone rumour season, what will the next iPhone be called?
01:32:07 ◼ ► I think it's going to, I think they will go back to numbers because it's going to get too messy.
01:32:11 ◼ ► I think there will be an iPhone 11, there will be an iPhone 11 Max, and there will be an iPhone 11R.
01:32:26 ◼ ► Yeah. I am, I am in agreement with you on that one, I think. At least for now. If you would like
01:32:33 ◼ ► to ask a question for us to finish out the show, you can send it or do it with the hashtag #askupgrade.
01:32:38 ◼ ► We've got a lot, we had a lot we didn't get to today because we, the scorecard is a big topic
01:32:44 ◼ ► to get through and we don't want to have you sit here for four hours while we get through everything
01:32:48 ◼ ► we had to get through today. And if you want to find our show notes for this episode, you can go
01:32:52 ◼ ► to relay.fm/upgrades/230. Jason is online. He is at sixcolors.com where you can find the scorecard
01:33:00 ◼ ► and all of its glory. There is a lot of charts and there is a lot of information that we didn't cover
01:33:06 ◼ ► in today's episode. So I do, uh, employ you to go and check it out. There's a lot of really great
01:33:10 ◼ ► quotes from a lot of really, uh, intelligent and smart people. There's some cool stuff to say,
01:33:15 ◼ ► so you can go and check that out at sixcolors.com. Jason is @jsnell on Twitter. I am @imike, I M Y K E.
01:33:22 ◼ ► This show is a part of relay.fm. You can find upgrade and many, many other shows. In fact,
01:33:27 ◼ ► some would say pretty much all of the great shows over at relay.fm/shows and you can pick up a new
01:33:33 ◼ ► show there. Um, and we'll be back next time. Thanks again to our sponsors, the fine folk over at