00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 221. Today's show is brought to you by Simple Contact,
00:00:16 ◼ ► Luna Display, PDF Pen, and Holo. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.
00:00:23 ◼ ► From my garage, this is me. Hello, Jason. It's Cyber Monday today, so everyone's gonna get 25%
00:00:31 ◼ ► more upgrade because we're gonna, for the low, low price of regular upgrade, because we're gonna be
00:00:38 ◼ ► doing My Neighbor Totoro at the end of today's episode as we welcome back Myke at the Movies.
00:00:43 ◼ ► Yay, yes, I'm looking forward to that. So it's like one of those plastic bottles that gets a
00:00:49 ◼ ► little bit larger and then they put a thing on the side that says 25% more than other bottles that
00:00:55 ◼ ► are smaller than this one, that kind of thing. That's what we have today. But we do have a
00:01:00 ◼ ► #SnellTalk question and this one comes from Jared, and Jared wants to know, Jason, what is your
00:01:05 ◼ ► opinion on Christmas music? When should it start to be played and do you have some favorites?
00:01:16 ◼ ► as an American, I think that one of the great things about Thanksgiving, which we just had
00:01:21 ◼ ► on Thursday and my kids were out of school all last week and it was a pretty light week,
00:01:26 ◼ ► it was nice and I'm back to work today. I love Thanksgiving not only because I think it's
00:01:31 ◼ ► actually a very nice holiday and the idea that it is about reflection and thinking about what
00:01:36 ◼ ► you're thankful for and it's an opportunity for families to get together and it's also for
00:01:41 ◼ ► everybody in America. It's not based on any particular like religious background or anything
00:01:47 ◼ ► like that, it is for everybody. So I like that. It also is a really good backstop. I mean, it's
00:01:52 ◼ ► leaky. It's leaky these days, I'm not going to lie, but I feel like when I was flying back from
00:01:57 ◼ ► Ool a couple of years ago, I was in the Dublin airport and it was like October 27th or something
00:02:03 ◼ ► and there was Christmas stuff everywhere. And I thought, oh my God, why is all this Christmas
00:02:08 ◼ ► stuff out? And I said, oh, you know, they don't have a Thanksgiving to act as like a wall because
00:02:13 ◼ ► I am a believer in the, like I have some great holiday playlists that I really like, but I don't
00:02:20 ◼ ► listen to them until after Thanksgiving. So like now that it's after Thanksgiving, which is always
00:02:27 ◼ ► what is it, the fourth Thursday in November, now we can break it in. Now we're talking about when
00:02:35 ◼ ► are we going to go get a Christmas tree, get out all the decorations and stuff like that.
00:02:40 ◼ ► So we're getting there. We're getting there. So that's my official policy. Thanks for asking
00:02:46 ◼ ► about when Christmas things start to happen, at least here. In England, do they just break
00:02:51 ◼ ► out the Christmas stuff like November 1st, October 10th? You talking in retail because retail,
00:02:57 ◼ ► it's like it was happening before Halloween in places. Yeah. Just like the Dublin airport.
00:03:03 ◼ ► Yeah. It was getting pretty serious, which is frustrating. I think. I mean, I would prefer to
00:03:10 ◼ ► wait until like we're about a month away. That kind of feels like the way to do it for me, but
00:03:17 ◼ ► you know, retail is going to retail, Jason. Retail is going to retail. What can you do?
00:03:30 ◼ ► I will give everybody a link that we can put in the show notes to a piece that I have written
00:03:36 ◼ ► a couple of times once at Macworld, but more recently at Six Colors with this kind of geeky
00:03:42 ◼ ► holiday music playlist that I built. In terms of traditional, you know, I really like the Christmas
00:03:50 ◼ ► song, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Nat King Cole. I like that one a lot. O'Tannenbaum is fun,
00:03:57 ◼ ► especially there's a They Might Be Giants version that's in the original German, which is fun.
00:04:01 ◼ ► And yeah, that's been in terms of what I would say kind of old school, I would go with a Christmas
00:04:14 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question to open an episode, just send in a tweet with the hashtag
00:04:20 ◼ ► SnellTalk and it may be picked for future use. Thank you to Jared for that great question.
00:04:25 ◼ ► Upgradeyourwardrobe.com is where you can go right now to buy Upgrade merch. We have merch items
00:04:32 ◼ ► available just until December the 4th. I want to thank everybody. We both would like to thank
00:04:37 ◼ ► everybody who has bought one of our wonderful Dongletown t-shirts so far. They seem to have been
00:04:42 ◼ ► received very warmly. So I recommend that people go and get those. We have Dongletown tees in blue
00:04:47 ◼ ► and orange. We have a very limited stock left of the Upgrade logo enamel pin. And then you can also
00:04:54 ◼ ► buy a hoodie or a regular Upgrade logo t-shirt if you would like to. You can also follow @_upgradefm
00:05:02 ◼ ► on Twitter because we've been giving away some free codes, which we're going to keep doing over
00:05:06 ◼ ► the next week. So you might be able to nag yourself a free t-shirt there, but we would love it if you
00:05:12 ◼ ► have the means and desire that you would want to purchase any of our merchandise right now,
00:05:16 ◼ ► that you would go and do that. We would love that. So you can go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com
00:05:24 ◼ ► and you can go ahead and buy some of our wonderful merchandise. Yeah, and you can also go to
00:05:30 ◼ ► the incomparable.com/shirt and I've got a bunch of incomparable and six color stuff available
00:05:37 ◼ ► over there too. Hat, sweatshirt, other good stuff. Wonderful. So you can go and check those out.
00:05:46 ◼ ► There's lots of great stuff available right now, but you can go and buy those if you would like.
00:05:52 ◼ ► Talking about dongles, we have some dongle related follow up today. So on the last episode,
00:05:57 ◼ ► we were trying to work out when it was that we first mentioned dongle town and I proposed that
00:06:02 ◼ ► it was on episode 114, but I couldn't find it. Um, good friend of the show, underscore David Smith
00:06:10 ◼ ► did two things. One confirmed that it was on episode 114 was the first time that dongle town
00:06:16 ◼ ► was mentioned on upgrade, but also what's more for a reason that I don't know why he did it,
00:06:21 ◼ ► but I love that he did. David has compiled a super cut of every single time me and you have said the
00:06:29 ◼ ► word dongle over the first 220 episodes of upgrade. It is a five minute audio file that you can go
00:06:38 ◼ ► and get, uh, which I'll put a link in the show notes. Um, so you can listen to it. It includes
00:06:43 ◼ ► a little bit of context every time that we say it, but if you just want to hear me and Jason saying
00:06:47 ◼ ► dongles, dongles, dongles over and over and over again, uh, you can go and check out the, all the
00:06:53 ◼ ► great dongles, uh, link, uh, if you want that. And thank you to underscore for doing that.
00:07:00 ◼ ► So that's there. I also wanted to mention, uh, we got a great, uh, piece of dongle fan art from
00:07:07 ◼ ► Ian on Twitter, which said the UK tourism poster for dongleton on sea, the beautiful seaside town,
00:07:14 ◼ ► which I love so much. It is the British seaside town of dongleton on sea. Um, and it's, it is,
00:07:21 ◼ ► I want, it's a tour tourism poster. So I really love this a lot. Actually. Dongleton on sea is a
00:07:28 ◼ ► much, a much nicer thought for me than just dongleton. It's good. This is a very frequent
00:07:33 ◼ ► thing in British seaside towns. It's something on sea. Well, and it's USB-C right? So it's the
00:07:38 ◼ ► dongleton on sea is perfect. Oh my gosh. I did not get that. Oh yeah. That's the listener. Ian, uh,
00:07:44 ◼ ► yeah, perhaps that should be on, on USB-C. So that's where it is. So if you're, if summering in,
00:07:50 ◼ ► uh, in England, uh, go to dongleton on sea. What a beautiful place it would be. It's the price of
00:07:56 ◼ ► admission is a little high, but yeah. Well, all the hotels have these strange, um, uh, strange
00:08:02 ◼ ► power plugs. So you have to bring an adapter. Yeah. Funnily enough, you even have to bring
00:08:06 ◼ ► your own adapters when you visit dongleton. All right. So do you remember on the last episode,
00:08:12 ◼ ► we were talking about the tragic wildfires and the terrible in California and the terrible air
00:08:18 ◼ ► quality and you, Jason posted the question of, I wonder what Apple parks doing considering they
00:08:22 ◼ ► have the natural ventilation system, right? Where it brings in air to cool the place down instead
00:08:27 ◼ ► of air conditioning. Well, we had an anonymous listener right in to tell us exactly what is
00:08:33 ◼ ► happening. So apparently this is not a practice. What the person told us, the smoke has been rough,
00:08:38 ◼ ► but Apple park is able to shut down the natural ventilation system for just this type of situation.
00:08:43 ◼ ► This also came in handy in the early days of the building being put together when we moved in
00:08:48 ◼ ► because the landscaping meant that the outside smell of manure, uh, yup. This doesn't mean all
00:08:54 ◼ ► of the air inside is clean though. The various entryways feel identical to the outside and
00:09:05 ◼ ► Interesting. So I think this is, uh, fascinating. So it's not as bad as maybe it could have been,
00:09:10 ◼ ► but, um, you know, they probably also waited to shut it down and the air quality inside was always
00:09:17 ◼ ► not great. And the entryways that are probably pretty spacious and are letting in a lot of the
00:09:20 ◼ ► polluted air. And I wonder if they are thinking about, uh, uh, air filtration strategy or something
00:09:27 ◼ ► to clean up the air inside if it, if it's dirty, but this is interesting to hear. Uh, I appreciate
00:09:32 ◼ ► our anonymous listener saying that Apple Park does have some sort of strategies for this.
00:09:36 ◼ ► And, uh, the good news is that a, uh, storm front came in on Wednesday in the Bay Area and the air
00:09:43 ◼ ► is clear now. Oh, that is good news. That is good news. And, uh, what is the fire situation?
00:09:51 ◼ ► Fires are, those fires are out. They got, they got con- they're in containment and we also had
00:09:56 ◼ ► a lot of rain, which helped a lot. Yeah. Thank you for the rain, I guess, right? That's,
00:10:01 ◼ ► that's a good thing to have in a situation like that. Uh, the upgrade is, we still, we're still
00:10:06 ◼ ► getting lots and lots and lots of votes. We have set a closing date for upgrade is nominations.
00:10:12 ◼ ► You have until December 24th to get your votes in for the fifth annual upgrade is. So if you want to
00:10:20 ◼ ► get your votes in, this is an unprecedented opportunity to get your votes in over a long
00:10:31 ◼ ► but we're going to, we are going to record it early, but, um, it's not going to be, um,
00:10:37 ◼ ► too early. So we have, we have, it's good. It's good. We have until the end of the year for us
00:10:41 ◼ ► to consider our favorites of the year and for you to give your suggestions, which I like a lot.
00:10:47 ◼ ► Yep. Yep. So this, uh, by the way, just, I guess we can say this now, right? To this episode will
00:10:52 ◼ ► be, uh, the, the upgraded episode is going to be the episode that goes out on December 31st. So it's
00:11:00 ◼ ► going to be the last episode of the year. Um, that's when it's going to go up. So you'll be
00:11:05 ◼ ► able to check it out then, but you've got, you've got ample time, uh, to get your votes cast. If you
00:11:11 ◼ ► would like to do so, um, you know, you don't have to have a vote for every category. If you only have
00:11:16 ◼ ► one to submit votes for some that's perfectly valid to do by the way. Uh, so nothing, no,
00:11:20 ◼ ► no categories are actually required categories. So feel free to submit what you would like. Um,
00:11:26 ◼ ► and they will all be calculated and we'll go towards where the upgrade ease are going to be
00:11:30 ◼ ► awarded, uh, in the fifth annual upgrade ease, which is very, very exciting. And again, this is,
00:11:35 ◼ ► uh, as we've said, I think we said last week, this is an exciting way. The Mondays fall in December
00:11:41 ◼ ► where on the, uh, on, on that same day, Christmas Eve, we will have the, uh, upgrade holiday special.
00:11:48 ◼ ► What will be special about it? Wait and see. I can't wait to find out. And on the 31st,
00:11:53 ◼ ► then on new year's Eve, the upgrade ease. So there's lots of great things coming your way
00:11:58 ◼ ► in December, uh, from the upgrade program. Indeed, including next week's episode, which because of,
00:12:04 ◼ ► uh, I believe you are going to be on assignment next week. Yes. As we like to say, you will be
00:12:18 ◼ ► host next week. I don't want to tell you who it is, but I will remind you unrelated that
00:12:22 ◼ ► nothing is so perfect that it can't be complained about. I wonder who that could be. I don't know.
00:12:27 ◼ ► Nobody knows. You'll have to find out and check out upgrade next week. Now I was saying to Jason
00:12:32 ◼ ► before the show, I always enjoy listening to upgrade. So don't mind it when I have the time.
00:12:46 ◼ ► I have one piece of upstream news for you. Uh, this was from a report from the information,
00:12:50 ◼ ► um, via nine to five Mac. The Apple is apparently considering for as much as that can, can truly
00:12:59 ◼ ► mean, uh, a cheaper version, almost in dongle style of the Apple TV, like Chrome cast or the
00:13:07 ◼ ► fire TV sticks. So like a little HDMI dongle that you plug into the back of your television,
00:13:12 ◼ ► um, to, so you'll be able to access Apple TV content. So what you would naturally expect
00:13:18 ◼ ► that the differences between this, if it ever comes out, um, and the Apple TV that we have now
00:13:23 ◼ ► is in power and storage. So this would probably only be streaming stuff and it wouldn't have games
00:13:29 ◼ ► and apps for as useful as they are in the Apple TV. Um, and maybe some, there might be some other
00:13:36 ◼ ► restrictions and we would assume that they would do this. So they're able to get their new content
00:13:45 ◼ ► Yeah. I wonder about this, um, and how they would do it and would they, part of me wants to say that
00:13:51 ◼ ► Apple would not do something, a product like this and make it super compromised because that doesn't
00:13:57 ◼ ► feel like Apple at the same time. Um, I mean, this report's weird cause it's considering, it's like,
00:14:02 ◼ ► not even that they're working on it. They're just like, somebody is thinking, should we do it? Uh,
00:14:05 ◼ ► I do think that there would be, uh, and a more affordable entry into Apple TV would probably
00:14:10 ◼ ► be good for Apple to have, but Apple hasn't done that yet. I've seen people speculate that it
00:14:14 ◼ ► wouldn't do 4k. I kind of have a hard time believing a brand new product in 2019 wouldn't
00:14:19 ◼ ► do 4k HDR. Like I think they got to do that. Um, but this idea that maybe it wouldn't be as,
00:14:25 ◼ ► as fast a processor, uh, therefore it might not be good as good for games or they might even,
00:14:31 ◼ ► you know, I don't think it sounds like Apple, but it is possible that they could make it a
00:14:36 ◼ ► strip down thing that didn't run the whole app platform, but only parts only could see parts of
00:14:40 ◼ ► the app store, like for video playback. Um, or even, uh, basically just ran the TV app. Uh, I
00:14:47 ◼ ► doubt they would do that because they want to let the third party providers provide their own apps.
00:14:52 ◼ ► Um, you want to be able to run Netflix and all that, but you know, they could bar everything.
00:14:57 ◼ ► It's seeing anything that was not in the, like the video section of the app store. Um, or I think
00:15:02 ◼ ► more likely they would just, you know, it'll be stripped down and it won't have much storage and
00:15:05 ◼ ► it will be, uh, but it'll still be an Apple TV. Um, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I would love
00:15:11 ◼ ► for them to do this because I think the entry price for the Apple TV is still too high given
00:15:15 ◼ ► their competition and given their motivation to get people into their ecosystem. And, you know,
00:15:20 ◼ ► I talked to somebody, a friend of mine this weekend who wanted to buy, um, a couple of these
00:15:26 ◼ ► seasons that are on sale on iTunes, TV seasons. And, but he didn't have an Apple TV and he's like,
00:15:31 ◼ ► I don't, I don't want to watch this on my iPad. And I thought, Oh yeah, you know, that's one of
00:15:35 ◼ ► those things that, you know, by not having the ability to get the iTunes stuff and, and whatever
00:15:40 ◼ ► Apple's going to do on the streaming stuff onto your TV set, uh, even if you're in Apple's
00:15:44 ◼ ► ecosystem a little bit, uh, that kind of stinks. So I think there's something to be said for Apple
00:15:49 ◼ ► to make that more accessible, whether it's a cheaper base model Apple TV, or it's one of these
00:15:54 ◼ ► stick things that's, that's a smaller and cheaper and maybe less functional. I think they do have to
00:16:05 ◼ ► the answer would be right. The, the, the regular Apple TV. So you can buy a non 4k Apple TV for
00:16:16 ◼ ► $149. And if you want to get your content into people's homes, I'm not sure that's the best way
00:16:26 ◼ ► to do that. Right. It doesn't feel like offering a $150 entry point before you even start paying
00:16:42 ◼ ► 4k version is 35. So yeah. So like, you know, it's like, obviously Amazon have options this
00:16:50 ◼ ► cheap because they want people to see their content. Right. And then when you're looking
00:16:54 ◼ ► at something which is like four to five times more expensive before you start charging them,
00:16:58 ◼ ► I don't know if that's the right way to get people to watch the content that you're investing billions
00:17:04 ◼ ► of dollars into making, but it all depends on what Apple's ultimate strategy is. But I would
00:17:09 ◼ ► naturally think that if you're making a television series, you want people to see it and as many
00:17:14 ◼ ► people as possible. So maybe it's the right thing to do to try and have an option which is cheaper.
00:17:21 ◼ ► And I really don't think washer on your iPhone is the answer. Right. Right. This is the challenge
00:17:28 ◼ ► is what they want to do is get people who have iPhones or iPads or both to get them to start
00:17:36 ◼ ► thinking of Apple as a source for their TV set as well. And you know, again, having that interaction
00:17:43 ◼ ► with my friend over the weekend, I had that moment where I thought, Oh yeah, this is a huge untapped
00:17:49 ◼ ► market for Apple where these, you know, he, he's not even considered getting an Apple TV. And that's
00:17:54 ◼ ► the solution to his issue of, well, I want to buy these seasons, but I don't want to watch them on
00:17:58 ◼ ► my iPad. I want to watch them on my TV, but he's not going to buy the Apple TV at its current
00:18:02 ◼ ► pricing. So what can Apple do? How much money have you saved on buying the office of $35 when you
00:18:08 ◼ ► need to buy $150 item to play them? Right. So they're already in the ecosystem, but they're not
00:18:13 ◼ ► in the TV part of the ecosystem, the TV set part. And, uh, and that's important to Apple and, you
00:18:18 ◼ ► know, airplay is how you get things on there and you need an Apple TV for that too. So like, I, I
00:18:31 ◼ ► part of me wants to say this product is not going to make or break your company, right?
00:18:34 ◼ ► It's totally not. It is a minor product. This product exists to be a compliment to your ecosystem.
00:18:40 ◼ ► So maybe you need to start being super aggressive about it as a piece of hardware, because you want
00:18:45 ◼ ► people in your services ecosystem and you want to sell these into every home that's got iPhones in
00:18:50 ◼ ► it because it makes the iPhones that much more capable because you can throw the iPhone content
00:18:54 ◼ ► up onto the TV. Um, so like, you know, it is, it is just one of those things that I think,
00:19:00 ◼ ► uh, Apple needs to change how they're thinking about it. And maybe they will, maybe, maybe this
00:19:05 ◼ ► is part of that. The, the Steve Jobs line, right? That the Apple TV was a hobby. Um, that makes
00:19:11 ◼ ► sense. Still makes sense up until the point that the TV service launches. It's not a hobby anymore.
00:19:16 ◼ ► Like everything that Apple has done, everything that Apple has continued to release, even the
00:19:20 ◼ ► Apple TV 4k that we have today, you can look at it and be like, this is the thing they do on the
00:19:24 ◼ ► side, right? Like it's just, here's a little thing. It's a different way to get this content
00:19:28 ◼ ► and blah, blah, blah. Right? Like it's like, Oh, it looks like maybe a fun project that they like
00:19:32 ◼ ► to work on. But then when you start dropping billions of dollars and signing like a-listers
00:19:37 ◼ ► to create TV shows for you, it's not a hobby anymore. You see it as a temp poll of your
00:19:41 ◼ ► business. And if that's the case, you need to tie up the actual tell the home television strategy
00:19:48 ◼ ► a little bit better than you've got because right now that's not the case, right? Like it's fine
00:19:58 ◼ ► with how it is, but you need something more and the iPhone and the iPad, that is not an answer,
00:20:04 ◼ ► right? Like I don't want to watch every show at home on my iPad. I watched them on my iPad
00:20:09 ◼ ► while I'm on a plane, right? Or I watched them maybe when I'm in bed like at night. But if me
00:20:14 ◼ ► and Idina are watching a new big TV series that we love, we're watching it on the TV on our sofa
00:20:19 ◼ ► comfortably, right? With our two home pods playing the sound for us. Like that's what I want to do.
00:20:25 ◼ ► I don't want to watch it on my iPad. So whilst I have an Apple TV and I like my Apple TV,
00:20:30 ◼ ► I don't think that's the right answer for everyone. So we'll see what they're going to do.
00:20:35 ◼ ► If anything. All right, today's show is brought to you in part by Hello. Hello make insanely
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00:23:07 ◼ ► of this show and Relay FM. So we have been talking a lot over the past couple of weeks about the
00:23:16 ◼ ► possibilities, the great possibilities and dreams and hopes that we have for iOS 13, especially as
00:23:23 ◼ ► it pertains to the iPad, right? Yeah. That's a nice way of saying what's missing on the iPad,
00:23:29 ◼ ► but yes, our hearts turn, a nation's eyes turn to iOS 13 to see what it might offer to make the iPad
00:23:37 ◼ ► Pro more functional. Yes. So you put your fingers where your mouth is? Yeah, I don't even know. So
00:23:44 ◼ ► there was a tweet. The story is there was a tweet. As all good stories begin. They begin with a
00:23:49 ◼ ► tweet. There's a million tweets in the Naked City. This is one of them. The reader Myke R. on Twitter
00:23:54 ◼ ► replied to a tweet that I sent out for my review, my Six Colors review of the iPad. And he said,
00:24:04 ◼ ► and I think this is really funny, can we get a David Letterman top 10 iOS 13 iPad features
00:24:10 ◼ ► you'd like to see list a top 10 list of David Letterman for those who do not know, long time
00:24:14 ◼ ► talk show host in the United States, retired now has a Netflix show. Will it come back? I don't
00:24:20 ◼ ► know. I haven't heard anything about that, but great Netflix show. Really good. So, and one of
00:24:24 ◼ ► my favorites, all time, very formative for me. Been watching it. You know, I watched it when I was,
00:24:29 ◼ ► you know, a kid, I through high school and stuff and college. So, and one of his bits was a top 10
00:24:36 ◼ ► list where it would be like a comedy top 10 list. So you have a premise top 10 things we'd like to
00:24:40 ◼ ► see from, you know, whatever. Right. And then there would be 10, 10 counted down to one. There'd
00:24:45 ◼ ► be drum rolls. And it was jokes because it's just, it's comedy. There were, there were jokes. And the
00:24:50 ◼ ► last one would often be completely absurd. That was not the funniest one. Wasn't number one.
00:24:55 ◼ ► That was usually the most absurd one. And anyway, so listener slash reader, Myke R wanted to know
00:25:00 ◼ ► top 10 iPad features. I'd like to see, I very quickly responded to him on Twitter with a top 10
00:25:06 ◼ ► list. And that got a lot of commentary and I thought, well, I should just write an article
00:25:12 ◼ ► like, and it was the easiest article. I wrote that for Mac roll for my macro column last week,
00:25:16 ◼ ► the easiest article I have ever written because I already had done the thinking about the list. So
00:25:22 ◼ ► all I had to do was explain what was on the list and because there were 10 of them, they didn't
00:25:25 ◼ ► have to be long explanations. And so, yes, that's where it started is what, what about the top 10?
00:25:31 ◼ ► And then that got people talking and posted that and people are like, but what about this? But what
00:25:34 ◼ ► about this? But what about this? And I think it turned into a very interesting exercise of sort of
00:25:38 ◼ ► like, what are those features that are, that are missing that we would really like to see?
00:25:41 ◼ ► And I sort of ranked them. I mean, there's room for improvement. I left a couple out that I think
00:25:46 ◼ ► are probably more important than some of the ones I left in, but it was also a personal list. There
00:25:50 ◼ ► are some features that I think are important for a lot of people that were not as important for me.
00:25:54 ◼ ► So I didn't list them. Uh, but yeah, it was a fun exercise. So we will run through the list as you
00:26:00 ◼ ► wrote it. And then at the end, we will address some of the like common, what do you think abouts?
00:26:05 ◼ ► Um, and maybe some of the stuff that was missed off. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe you didn't
00:26:09 ◼ ► mention there. I got a few of those, so we will cover those too. Number 10 menu bar mode. What is
00:26:16 ◼ ► a menu bar mode on the iPad? Menu bar mode. I, uh, uh, so my, this is a, this is why it's number
00:26:23 ◼ ► 10 is it's kind of a dumb idea, but the idea is that if, uh, if developers are converting their
00:26:29 ◼ ► apps using marzipan next year to run on the Mac, what they're going to have to do is things like
00:26:35 ◼ ► define how they work with menu bars and windows and stuff like that. And it got me thinking,
00:26:45 ◼ ► if, uh, those same apps running on the iPad pro, maybe they could take advantage of all that extra
00:26:50 ◼ ► information, the menu bar, uh, Mac menu bar information and keyboard shortcuts and all of
00:26:55 ◼ ► that, and kind of enter a mode. That's not turn it into a Mac, but is something that might be more
00:27:00 ◼ ► drivable on an external display, uh, with, uh, you know, either, either like a keyboard and a trackpad
00:27:07 ◼ ► or even using the iPad as a pointing device. Um, it sort of like converts it into something more
00:27:13 ◼ ► like a desktop when it's attached to an external display. Again, number 10, kind of a wacky one that
00:27:20 ◼ ► I actually don't think Apple will ever do because it feels like a bridge too far, but I think they
00:27:25 ◼ ► totally could. And a lot of the feedback I got was surprising in that it was positive, like Steve
00:27:29 ◼ ► Trout and Smith, I think responded to this one. He's like, yeah, they could do way more than that.
00:27:32 ◼ ► Use those marzipan apps. And there was somebody else who said, why do you say this in context of
00:27:36 ◼ ► the iPad? I want to plug in my iPhone to a big monitor and have it enter menu bar mode. And I
00:27:44 ◼ ► saying the iPhone. That's why I didn't mention the iPhone, but yeah, totally. You could. Um,
00:27:48 ◼ ► I don't know. This is, it feels like it's a bridge too far for Apple because Apple seems to have made
00:27:52 ◼ ► some very, uh, drawn some lines that they seem unwilling to erase about what, uh, iOS looks like.
00:27:59 ◼ ► And I think marzipan is, is actually the proof of that. The idea that rather than bring iOS to a
00:28:05 ◼ ► laptop form factor, they've just decided they're going to make the apps go over to the laptop,
00:28:09 ◼ ► but not call it iOS. They're going to call it Mac OS, but it's going to be iOS apps on Mac OS.
00:28:17 ◼ ► I think about the big external drive or device, uh, support the big external display support 4k,
00:28:22 ◼ ► 5k displays. And I think you got to do something with that. That isn't just, it's an, you know,
00:28:28 ◼ ► it's a preview of your media, right? Like there's gotta be something more you could do make to make
00:28:33 ◼ ► that more useful. And one way would be to find a way to drive that interface. Uh, and you know,
00:28:38 ◼ ► you can't do that right now on iOS. It's just a mirror or it's an external preview. So something,
00:28:43 ◼ ► maybe menu bar mode is that. If menu bar mode was, or something like that would exist, like when you
00:28:49 ◼ ► plug it in and the interface changes in some way to allow you to maybe use more powerful applications,
00:28:54 ◼ ► use more of them at one time. There are other things that you need to do that and we will get
00:28:58 ◼ ► to those, right? Cause there's some, there's some different things that you would need. Um, but kind
00:29:02 ◼ ► of just, just going back to this a moment, like maybe, maybe right. Like thinking of it as like
00:29:07 ◼ ► menu bar mode is not the right way to think of it. Cause it might just be that like, what is the next
00:29:15 ◼ ► thing? So like you take the Mac and you take the iOS and you smushed them together and then what
00:29:19 ◼ ► comes out, right? Like how does a computer look like that? Right? Like if now you have a really
00:29:24 ◼ ► big screen, you have a 27 inch screen and you have iOS slash Mac OS apps that can run together in the
00:29:31 ◼ ► same place. What does that user interface look like? Right. And maybe they call it desktop mode
00:29:36 ◼ ► or external display mode. If it was a marketing, marketing name for it, I might call it like
00:29:40 ◼ ► desktop mode or something like that. And just say, this is how do you use iOS on a desktop? Well,
00:29:44 ◼ ► here's one way of attaching to an external display. I also don't think it would have like
00:29:48 ◼ ► Mac windows, right? I think it would have, I think we're assuming iOS 13 is going to have some sort of
00:29:53 ◼ ► a different, uh, some spin on multitasking, uh, in, in including running as we'll get to later,
00:29:59 ◼ ► like tabs maybe. But, but whatever it'll be, I think it'll be a more iOS method of running
00:30:14 ◼ ► external touch screen support. What does this mean? This would be even better. Uh, and this
00:30:20 ◼ ► would be what if you plugged an iPad or an iPhone, I suppose, into, uh, one of these 4k or 5k displays
00:30:27 ◼ ► that was a touch screen. And I don't know what the standards are, although, you know, if Apple
00:30:34 ◼ ► built its external display with touch multi-touch on it, they, uh, they could do it however they
00:30:41 ◼ ► liked. But the idea of, uh, we keep talking about what if Apple made a surface studio that, you know,
00:30:48 ◼ ► that that's the iMac like product. I was actually at Twit yesterday and Leo Laporte on the set,
00:30:52 ◼ ► he was using the surface studio. Um, and with the, with the side edges and the, actually the shape
00:30:58 ◼ ► of the buttons on it, it looks like an oversized novelty iPad pro 2018. It legitimately, it looks
00:31:04 ◼ ► like a, a, an enormous iPad pro sitting at his desk. But what if Apple doesn't make that? What
00:31:10 ◼ ► if Apple just makes a display, a 4k or 5k display with touch and says, if you want to use this as an
00:31:17 ◼ ► iPad, just plug in an iPad and boom, now you have an iPad that's that size. Why not? And I liked the
00:31:25 ◼ ► thing that you posed as like, well, we know Apple are making monitors again, right? Like what if one
00:31:31 ◼ ► of them was really expensive and it was this, right? So you could attach it to your Mac pro or
00:31:37 ◼ ► your Mac mini or as an external display for your iMac pro, but you could also attach it to your
00:31:41 ◼ ► iPad pro. Oh, I would love that. Wouldn't that be cool? Now there are, there are ergonomic issues
00:31:47 ◼ ► there because like the surface studio has this kind of drafting table kind of mode where it'll
00:31:52 ◼ ► drop way down. It's not like a iMac. That's what I would want, right? Like I would want them to make
00:31:56 ◼ ► that. You kind of need to do it that way. But you know, Apple is not beyond doing something very
00:32:01 ◼ ► similar. And if it wasn't, the thing about the surface studio is it's got a huge foot because
00:32:06 ◼ ► it's got the computer inside and it's got the thin, it's a little bit like the the gooseneck,
00:32:11 ◼ ► the Chrome arm iMac where there's a computer in the base and, and, and then the display is super
00:32:17 ◼ ► thin and light. So Apple doesn't have to do that. Apple needs weight in the base just to keep it
00:32:23 ◼ ► from tipping over, but Apple doesn't have to build a whole computer into it because it's an external
00:32:28 ◼ ► display and that gives them a little bit more freedom. I'm sure they could develop an adjustable
00:32:33 ◼ ► touch screen external display that would work for Mac users, especially if the Mac gets touch
00:32:45 ◼ ► So the next thing that you move on to is keyboard shortcuts for function keys. So, you know,
00:33:02 ◼ ► the keyboard folio, right, is being able to, that we, one of the things we had on our beloved
00:33:07 ◼ ► bridge keyboards is the ability to change the brightness, playing poor music. You have home,
00:33:16 ◼ ► like they're all there and Apple's keyboards don't have that, but it's more than just that, right?
00:33:24 ◼ ► The smart keyboard folio, um, doesn't have that row. And I said in my, you know, I was listening
00:33:31 ◼ ► to ATP and Marco talking about his briefings. I don't generally talk about what happens in
00:33:34 ◼ ► the briefings because they're sort of on background, but I will say this, that I said to
00:33:38 ◼ ► the people I was talking to very specifically, I said, the problem, I said, I like this keyboard.
00:33:42 ◼ ► It's very nice. You not having the function row. I know nobody cares about the function row,
00:33:47 ◼ ► but the function row is where you put all of your media shortcuts, your brightness and volume
00:33:51 ◼ ► shortcuts. And it kills me that you can't, uh, that you can't set as an alternative, set a keyboard
00:34:01 ◼ ► shortcut of your own, uh, for those things so that I can, when I'm using the smart keyboard folio,
00:34:06 ◼ ► and I want to adjust the volume or pause my song or change the brightness on an external
00:34:11 ◼ ► Bluetooth keyboard, I can do that from a key on the iPad. I have to, to reach up and swipe down
00:34:16 ◼ ► from control center and get the control and do it. And it's not as nice. And I will just say my,
00:34:22 ◼ ► the response was essentially, we hear you like it was not, Oh no, no, no, no. That's dumb. Nobody
00:34:29 ◼ ► does that. Right. It was like, we hear you, which is, I don't think that's an endorsement that
00:34:33 ◼ ► they're going to make a change down the road, but I, I, I was impressed that they didn't give
00:34:37 ◼ ► me an impassioned defense of omitting the function key row. I don't need those keys. I really don't,
00:34:53 ◼ ► And, um, and then they omitted them from this keyboard. I know Apple doesn't love the function
00:34:58 ◼ ► row cause they did the touch bar too, but, uh, it would be nice if I had an alternative to that.
00:35:04 ◼ ► And then you can, you can broaden it out from there, but the whole idea that, um, I want there
00:35:09 ◼ ► to be system-wide keyboard shortcuts like this and there could be others. And at that point,
00:35:13 ◼ ► you probably should have them be at least somewhat customizable. You can do that on the Mac today.
00:35:18 ◼ ► I know that risks collisions with, um, with apps, but you know, the Mac handles that today where
00:35:25 ◼ ► if there's a collision, the app wins and that's it. And it's fine. If you have a, an app that
00:35:31 ◼ ► collides with that keyboard shortcut, change the shortcut and just deal with it. If users can
00:35:36 ◼ ► assign it, then it doesn't matter. I would like to see more of that. This is one that is of great
00:35:42 ◼ ► interest to me and you, but maybe not the world at large, but would be wonderful is mature audio
00:35:47 ◼ ► support. Yeah. Yeah. This is, we beat on this a lot, but, uh, the way I boiled it down in,
00:35:54 ◼ ► in my article, and I think this is the way to think of it is we have apps on iOS that can record
00:36:00 ◼ ► audio. Um, and we can run more than one app at a time. In fact, you can run three apps at once with
00:36:07 ◼ ► slide over, but only one app can attach to your microphone at a time. Also, I mean, it goes beyond
00:36:14 ◼ ► that to things like if you have an app that has microphone access or, uh, you're playing music in
00:36:20 ◼ ► the background and then you tap on a video on Twitter, like lots of weird things happen because
00:36:25 ◼ ► iOS kind of wants to only have one thing playing at one time and one app to hatch the microphone
00:36:30 ◼ ► while another app is playing music, the music just stops, which is frustrating. So it's not just
00:36:35 ◼ ► input, it's just a more mature audio platform for iOS. And, uh, this comes up in a bunch of ways. I,
00:36:43 ◼ ► uh, one we'll mention later, um, is the idea that, um, for video conferencing, it's a similar thing
00:36:49 ◼ ► where you kind of have to do that full screen. Uh, somebody pointed out to me, it's like,
00:36:53 ◼ ► it would be really nice if it, you know, video conferencing, I could pop in picture and picture
00:36:57 ◼ ► or run side by side and run other apps and stuff. And it's like a lot of that stuff in a lot of apps
00:37:03 ◼ ► doesn't quite work right because Apple's, uh, Apple has not focused on making this stuff better,
00:37:10 ◼ ► but yes, I would really like it if I could have multiple input devices supported by iOS,
00:37:14 ◼ ► which doesn't exist right now. It's it switches for you. And yes, if I could run a recorder app
00:37:20 ◼ ► and a, uh, uh, uh, video conferencing or audio conferencing app side by side, and both of them
00:37:26 ◼ ► could see the microphone at once. So I could record myself while I was talking to you. That
00:37:30 ◼ ► would be great. It's just not there. Yeah. I mean, iOS seems to have some basic understanding
00:37:36 ◼ ► of multiple audio, right? Like an, like an AirPlay two has shown that, you know, you can be using
00:37:41 ◼ ► AirPlay two to play something and you can also hear audio, right? Like it, it's a thing that
00:37:48 ◼ ► there, there seems to be something, I mean, and I don't know how related or unrelated those things
00:37:52 ◼ ► are, but it's, it's huge. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big step forward on the input side. They haven't taken
00:37:56 ◼ ► this biggest step forward. Some of the apps still kind of like do weird things to your audio. Um,
00:38:08 ◼ ► And it was in a world where only one app ran at a time and the world has changed and this has not
00:38:24 ◼ ► appli- move audio between multiple applications. But let's just say audio bus has been around for
00:38:28 ◼ ► years and it hasn't really changed anything on iOS in significant ways. This is something that
00:38:33 ◼ ► I got feedback from somebody about who said there already exist these different interfaces that let
00:38:38 ◼ ► apps share audio. It's just that the apps, all the apps that do this video conferencing and audio
00:38:42 ◼ ► conferencing don't support it. And the implication there is that this is Apple's already solved this
00:38:47 ◼ ► problem. It's just the apps faults for not supporting it. And I'd say, well, I think it's
00:38:51 ◼ ► still false on Apple. This could be way easier. Uh, and whatever they're doing now, it's not
00:38:56 ◼ ► working because these apps aren't supporting it. And, uh, one way to make it way easier is to just
00:39:02 ◼ ► let the apps do what they're doing now and have it work. Yeah. Is that the apps don't need to support
00:39:07 ◼ ► it, right? Because that's not how it works on the Mac. Cause you know, Skype is not going to add
00:39:11 ◼ ► audio bus support. It's just not going to happen. I wish it would, but, uh, so, you know, Apple
00:39:16 ◼ ► needs to do something to get all of these audio apps to actually be able to, to interoperate in
00:39:21 ◼ ► a way that an audio bus also was built for, you know, basically music production stuff. And it's
00:39:25 ◼ ► probably overkill for these other apps to implement. Uh, but anyway, yeah, I just, I don't
00:39:32 ◼ ► care how it's done. I just want it to work. And I don't want to have to hope that one day the maker
00:39:39 ◼ ► of an app decides to finally implement it. I would like it to be, uh, something that Apple can do
00:39:44 ◼ ► with the system level to make this basically a no brainer. And developer tools for iOS. I guess
00:39:51 ◼ ► this is like the showing of maturity on the platform, right? Like a platform, I guess is
00:39:56 ◼ ► mature when you can make apps for it on the thing, right? Like you make Mac apps on a Mac, right?
00:40:01 ◼ ► Make iPad apps on the iPad. I mean, that's, that's the, that's the standard line to be a legitimate
00:40:06 ◼ ► computing platform. You've got to develop software on that platform. A lot of people believe that
00:40:10 ◼ ► those people are all software developers. I don't, I don't believe it. Um, I think it's a legitimate
00:40:18 ◼ ► legitimate computing platform now, but I will say yes, it would make lots of sense for Apple to do
00:40:25 ◼ ► some sort of development tool to on iOS. I wonder if it's not Xcode though. I wonder if Apple is
00:40:31 ◼ ► working on some sort of thing that they'll, you know, that'll be a next generation development
00:40:35 ◼ ► tool that runs on Mac and iOS and they keep Xcode around, but there's this thing in it and they kind
00:40:40 ◼ ► of final cut tenet where it's like, this is new and it's going to grow and Xcode is going to be
00:40:45 ◼ ► still around for a while, but we're also going to invest in this and it runs on both platforms and
00:40:49 ◼ ► it will be limited and they won't be able to bring over all their Mac software to, to run it on iOS
00:40:54 ◼ ► or even their iOS software. It'll be, you know, and there'll be complaints and the whole story,
00:40:58 ◼ ► right? I think that might be the approach they take. I think history has shown that that will 100%
00:41:03 ◼ ► be the route that gets taken and it's not a criticism, right? That's just, that's just the way
00:41:08 ◼ ► a lot of this stuff has been going. Like it's what Adobe is doing with Photoshop. They're doing this
00:41:13 ◼ ► exact thing too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, and, and that'll make everybody nervous because
00:41:19 ◼ ► people who rely on Xcode, they're like, what do you mean you've got a new development tool? What
00:41:22 ◼ ► about Xcode? And I think the answer will be Xcode's not going anywhere for a very long time on the Mac.
00:41:26 ◼ ► But we're also going to invest in this new thing that is on the Mac and iOS and that is sort of the
00:41:33 ◼ ► future development environment. And it's the, you know, the next generation developer environment.
00:41:39 ◼ ► They could also just do Xcode for iOS, but I just, my gut feeling is that that's an old piece of
00:41:44 ◼ ► software and that may be their solution when they introduce a lot of rumors about them introducing
00:41:48 ◼ ► a bunch of new development features and ways of building apps in a future version of the OS's.
00:41:55 ◼ ► I wonder if this is all connected. I'm trying to connect some dots here. So yes, I am in an
00:41:59 ◼ ► evidence dungeon with a bunch of yarn connecting different scraps of paper and like, let's figure
00:42:04 ◼ ► it out. People let's go through the rabbit hole here, but it does sort of feel like maybe this
00:42:08 ◼ ► is an opportunity for Apple to kind of say, here's a whole story about what we're doing with the
00:42:13 ◼ ► future of Apple platform development. And it includes, and that, that story has to include
00:42:19 ◼ ► iOS as a, as a place where you do your development. It can't just be a target. And, and, uh, uh, so
00:42:26 ◼ ► yes, even though I'm not a developer and kind of don't care from a professional level about like
00:42:32 ◼ ► the ability to develop on my iPad pro, cause I'm not going to do that. I think it does need to
00:42:36 ◼ ► happen at some point. And I would like to see Apple start to move in that direction because it
00:42:40 ◼ ► sends a signal, right? It's like the iPad pro it's so powerful. You can develop software on it. Like
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00:45:04 ◼ ► Yeah, I feel like I've talked about this one a lot, but it's the same thing. I mentioned that I think
00:45:09 ◼ ► external pointing devices have use on iOS and then everybody goes, no iOS, don't you know the rule is
00:45:15 ◼ ► that there are no pointing devices on iOS and there are no cursors. It's different. And it, you know,
00:45:20 ◼ ► not to, well, I already did. I already gave them a little bit of a funny voice there, but not to,
00:45:25 ◼ ► not to repel these complaints, but I feel like, uh, first off it's, it's the worst kind of, uh,
00:45:32 ◼ ► Steve jobs told us what this product was eight years ago and therefore it must always be that
00:45:36 ◼ ► way. It kind of like came down from the mountain top kind of dogma that it's just like, no wrong.
00:45:42 ◼ ► I don't care. I don't care what they thought about this product eight years ago. Let's talk about
00:45:45 ◼ ► 2018. Everybody knows Jason, Steve jobs never changed his mind. Yeah. Well, and it kills me
00:45:50 ◼ ► too because I get it from the other side too, where I talk about the Apple pencil and there
00:45:54 ◼ ► are people like, Oh, a stylist. I thought you didn't need those, which is not what Steve
00:45:57 ◼ ► jobs said about that either. But anyway, it wasn't about the iPad and it was about like whatever.
00:46:03 ◼ ► And it was about requiring a stylist instead of making it optional. But anyway, that's not,
00:46:08 ◼ ► that's already in there. That, that support that they said they would never, ever, ever,
00:46:12 ◼ ► ever come to iOS. Of course it did with the Apple pencil. So, um, external point is to what I'm not
00:46:17 ◼ ► asking for. And what I think a lot of people think when I talk about this is a little black
00:46:21 ◼ ► arrow that I can slide around on the screen between windows and turn my iPad into a Mac.
00:46:26 ◼ ► That's not what I want, but first off the genies out of the bottle, the, uh, editing text. There
00:46:31 ◼ ► was a whole raft of stories last week where people were blown away by the fact that you can use a,
00:46:36 ◼ ► uh, text cursor on iOS by 3d touch or, uh, by touch and hold on the, on the space bar. Um,
00:46:43 ◼ ► which is a thing we've talked about a lot, but is not super discoverable and therefore people are
00:46:49 ◼ ► still surprised by it. And it is great. And it's been in there for a while. Like Apple has a cursor
00:46:53 ◼ ► that you can move around on screen. It's already there. So the idea of having a cursor is already
00:47:00 ◼ ► an iOS for text editing where it's very useful. That's why they did it. And I would like that
00:47:05 ◼ ► for an external device that like a track pad that I could keep at the same plane as my keyboard.
00:47:10 ◼ ► So I don't have to reach up to the display to edit text. And the other thing that I use my
00:47:21 ◼ ► I have them on my iPad, but my iPad is up there and I'm down here on the keyboard. And I'd really
00:47:26 ◼ ► be able to like to be able to reach under or beside my keyboard and swipe to another app or
00:47:32 ◼ ► bring up multitasking with a, um, you know, a multi-finger gesture like I do on my Mac. Um,
00:47:38 ◼ ► and so I could, I could totally use an external device like the Apple pencil. It doesn't need to
00:47:43 ◼ ► be required, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a whole new round of, uh, of, of external
00:47:50 ◼ ► kind of keyboard accessories for iPad that also had a little track pad that you could use to edit
00:47:56 ◼ ► text or swipe between apps or whatever, without leaving your hand. Scrolling stuff all the time,
00:48:04 ◼ ► right? Like when I, when I'm sitting in keyboard mode, it's optimized for my hands on the keys,
00:48:08 ◼ ► but I still have to reach up and like swipe through a webpage. Well, I would love to be
00:48:13 ◼ ► able to just move my hand to the right slightly or down and, and do a two finger scroll and swipe
00:48:18 ◼ ► through that webpage. So I'm not saying it's super easy and there are like lots of complications with
00:48:22 ◼ ► it. And I don't think it would be a mainstream use. I think it would be a, you know, a small
00:48:26 ◼ ► productive subset. Like the keyboard is not a mainstream use, I would say, but I would,
00:48:30 ◼ ► I want it. I want it. Call it a pro user feature. It could be a pro feature. It could be. And then
00:48:36 ◼ ► if you're using, if you're using a video editor or an audio editor or all sorts of other applications,
00:48:41 ◼ ► now you've got this touch surface at the keyboard level that lets you do some swiping and scrolling
00:48:46 ◼ ► that you otherwise have to kind of like go back and forth between the keyboard and the screen.
00:48:49 ◼ ► And that's not as good. I will say like, I know what you mean about saying about the cursor, but
00:48:55 ◼ ► I do think that if there is an ultimate option, like if something that is being encouraged is that
00:49:00 ◼ ► we start plugging our iPads into 4k displays, I do think trying to find a way to, to have a cursor on
00:49:07 ◼ ► screen would be interesting. I think it is not an impossibility. That's menu bar mode, right? That's
00:49:13 ◼ ► maybe a little bit different, but yeah, I think in, in a, in a mode like that, I mean, you almost,
00:49:17 ◼ ► you would have to have this to do menu bar mode. And the cursor doesn't have to be the little black
00:49:22 ◼ ► arrow, right? Like it could be a circle, which is almost the size of a human finger, right? And then
00:49:26 ◼ ► you just use that. And that's just how it works. I guess. I don't love the idea of having a virtual
00:49:31 ◼ ► finger that you move around with a track pad. I don't, I don't love that idea. Um, I'd be okay
00:49:35 ◼ ► with an iOS that, that works with gestures and has cursors in very specific contexts, um, with
00:49:41 ◼ ► external pointing devices. I would love your thing. I'm just saying, I don't think it is a,
00:49:45 ◼ ► it's not the worst thing in the world to, to, to assume some kind of cursor, you know, cause it's
00:49:50 ◼ ► like there are other platforms, right? Like Chromebooks and windows, they find a way to
00:49:54 ◼ ► make these things coexist. I think it is not impossible. It's maybe not the most elegant thing,
00:49:59 ◼ ► but it might be interestingly usable over time. We'll see. And number four, I think, uh, upgrade
00:50:11 ◼ ► Yes. I ranted about this last time. So we'll just say, um, Apple one way Apple shows that it's
00:50:18 ◼ ► believes in its own platform as a pro platform. Yes. The developer tools is one way bringing its
00:50:23 ◼ ► other professional tools like final cut and logic to the iPad is another way Adobe's doing it with
00:50:28 ◼ ► Photoshop. I think it is. Yeah. I mean, it's, I already, I already ranted about it, so I won't
00:50:34 ◼ ► rant again other than to say that I think it is, uh, I think that Apple needs to do just to show
00:50:42 ◼ ► that it's taking the pro market on the iPad seriously, even if it's impractical, even if the,
00:50:49 ◼ ► uh, they won't have as many users for it, at least at first, like there are lots of excuses.
00:50:55 ◼ ► I had somebody say, well, you can't use logic on an 11 inch screen. And I thought I used logic on
00:51:00 ◼ ► an 11 inch MacBook air for years. So I know, I think they just need to do it to say, yes,
00:51:05 ◼ ► we are there to pro apps are real and they run great on iPad pro. I think they need to do it.
00:51:11 ◼ ► That's not necessarily an iOS feature, although maybe they need to update iOS to do it. I would
00:51:14 ◼ ► imagine it will come in conjunction with an iOS release, but maybe not, but still it's on my list.
00:51:24 ◼ ► keyboard shortcuts earlier. Wouldn't it be lovely to activate shortcuts, shortcuts with
00:51:29 ◼ ► keyboard shortcuts. It would be so great. I want keyboard access for shortcuts everywhere so that
00:51:35 ◼ ► I can run a shortcut without having to open the share menu and tap shortcuts. Um, I also want them
00:51:42 ◼ ► to truly run in the background. So I don't have to see every step running. Um, that happens in
00:51:48 ◼ ► Siri and it haps happens in the, uh, the today view in notification center. Um, they run there
00:51:56 ◼ ► without showing you all the steps. I would like it to run optionally other places without showing
00:52:00 ◼ ► those steps. So I could do a keyboard shortcut and it could say running shortcut, do, do, do, do,
00:52:04 ◼ ► done. Right. I would love to be able to do that. It does tie in with my idea of system wide
00:52:08 ◼ ► shortcuts, although the way the Mac does it, you can also apply shortcuts in particular apps.
00:52:13 ◼ ► Okay. If we want to do that, that's fine. And then the other part of this, uh, and it's something
00:52:17 ◼ ► that you and I have talked about a lot is, um, scheduling shortcuts, having the ability to say,
00:52:22 ◼ ► run the shortcut at 8.00 AM every day, tying it in with an alarm or having it be an alarm.
00:52:27 ◼ ► I was thinking HomeKit, you could tie it into HomeKit automations as well as another option.
00:52:32 ◼ ► Like alarms is great, but like this, it's another one, right? Like you have your good morning
00:52:36 ◼ ► shortcut. Why not just have that trigger with your automation or whatever, you know, like with your,
00:52:41 ◼ ► with your HomeKit automation is it's another way to potentially do it. Um, but it would be great,
00:52:46 ◼ ► right? Like this is, I genuinely feel like these types of things, these additions to shortcuts
00:52:52 ◼ ► are one of the more likely things because shortcuts is super powerful and they hadn't been
00:52:58 ◼ ► working on it for that long, you know, inside of Apple. And they did a lot of really interesting
00:53:02 ◼ ► stuff. This is the integration with iOS that I'm talking about here, but there are lots of other
00:53:06 ◼ ► ways. Um, Etienne Bueno in the chat room said it would be nice if there was an undo, undo gesture
00:53:11 ◼ ► and shortcuts. Yes. You should also be able to copy individual items and whole sets of items
00:53:16 ◼ ► and duplicate them or paste them elsewhere in the shortcuts. And of course, as Federico
00:53:21 ◼ ► Fidici will tell you at the drop of a hat, um, folders for shortcuts so that they're not all in
00:53:26 ◼ ► one giant scrolling list would also be nice. There are app improvements that need to be made with
00:53:31 ◼ ► shortcuts, but I also want it to be better integrated system-wide. Yes. Uh, we don't really
00:53:37 ◼ ► need to talk about number two anymore than we already have, but external storage in the files
00:53:41 ◼ ► app. Like it's such a gimme. My elevator pitch is basically, look, some people in some context
00:53:48 ◼ ► still need to read files off a drive or connect to a file server in their office or home. Um,
00:53:56 ◼ ► and you've got an app called files and you've got a USB-C device. You have a standard connector now.
00:54:04 ◼ ► Just, just make it happen. Just make it happen. Like it is, it is the one that boggles my mind
00:54:09 ◼ ► only because it could think of how much criticism they could have avoided in the arguments of not a
00:54:15 ◼ ► real computer. If they had been able to ship that feature before they shipped the new iPad Pro,
00:54:21 ◼ ► but they didn't, you know, the thing is, so Jason, it would have just been something else.
00:54:25 ◼ ► It would have been, but that would, that was, that was an easy, that was the easiest target
00:54:32 ◼ ► and they could have removed it and they didn't. And as we mentioned earlier, if you're following
00:54:38 ◼ ► along, the David Letterman style lists, the number one always was some kind of joke. So that's worth
00:54:43 ◼ ► bearing in mind. They were all jokes, but the most absurd and not necessarily funny joke was the
00:54:49 ◼ ► number one. And so for my list, I put number one, youmoji. Like we had animoji and we had memoji.
00:54:56 ◼ ► What about youmoji? Would this be that you would replace your friend's face with, with an
00:55:02 ◼ ► animoji because you don't want to see their face? I don't know. Whatever. It's just a joke. I don't
00:55:11 ◼ ► need this one. I'll take the other nine. But there's a bunch we didn't mention. So this is,
00:55:15 ◼ ► so there was one that I put in our document too, which is one we've spoken about in the past,
00:55:19 ◼ ► which I was surprised didn't make it to your list actually, because I know you care about this so
00:55:23 ◼ ► much. A desktop class Safari browser. Yeah, I think this is, it's complicated. This is the
00:55:30 ◼ ► reason that I didn't want to get into it in the article, but it's complicated because some of this
00:55:36 ◼ ► is on the web developers because web developers are sensing an iOS browser and serving a light
00:55:46 ◼ ► as a web developer, that there's a pointing device with hover states and, you know, all mouse click
00:55:51 ◼ ► states that are not ones that exist on a touch screen. And so they have to provide this alternate
00:55:58 ◼ ► view and they're basically doing it for phones. And the iPad is sort of stuck in the middle.
00:56:04 ◼ ► Right. Right. So that's possible. Also, Apple could find other ways. I think Apple could
00:56:11 ◼ ► find ways to make this more palatable. And the reason we want this is because there's some web
00:56:16 ◼ ► apps that should run fine on iPad and they don't because they're broken because they are serving
00:56:23 ◼ ► this weird mobile version. And if Safari was given the charter on iOS, that it should be at least
00:56:29 ◼ ► able to run desktop level stuff. Maybe it's a setting, maybe it's for certain sites. There
00:56:36 ◼ ► are lots of ways you could do it, but a lot of times you run into a situation where you need to
00:56:41 ◼ ► open a webpage on an iOS device and it doesn't work right. And I don't, you know, but why? Like
00:56:49 ◼ ► all the power is there, but it's being served strangely. You know, there are browsers that
00:56:55 ◼ ► will pose as computer browsers and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But I feel like this
00:57:01 ◼ ► is something, this is a problem that Apple needs to try to solve. And if some of that is by making
00:57:07 ◼ ► changes to the software that make it a more complicated world for web developers, so web
00:57:11 ◼ ► developers have to pay attention, or if they just have to fake it and just pretend they're a Mac
00:57:20 ◼ ► or make that mode optional, whatever it is, this is a frustration because sometimes there are apps
00:57:25 ◼ ► that are not as full featured as the web app. So you need to go to the web app or there is no app
00:57:29 ◼ ► for something and you have to use the web app. And when you try, you realize I literally can't
00:57:34 ◼ ► do this thing on my iPad because of the way that the website is built. Which is really annoying.
00:57:46 ◼ ► Somebody tweeted this in and it's totally true. If you run an app that's not universal so it
00:58:00 ◼ ► Yeah, and then blown up. It's not good. So I know that Apple doesn't want to make iPhone app
00:58:18 ◼ ► like it's, they're just so bad. So just, you know, have pity on the poor iPad user. We use our,
00:58:34 ◼ ► I mentioned it because it is something strange. I saw something strange a couple of days ago.
00:58:43 ◼ ► the iPhone app is so bad on the iPad. Like it's not, it's almost not worth using at all.
00:58:59 ◼ ► with the website version? And you can apparently add to your Instagram story. And I was like,
00:59:06 ◼ ► that's strange. So I pressed the button and it said, you have to rotate your device to portrait.
00:59:12 ◼ ► And I was like, this is so weird, but yeah, you rotate your device to portrait and you can take
00:59:17 ◼ ► pictures with the iPhone's camera on the Instagram website. And it's just like these things of like,
00:59:21 ◼ ► why did you make this Instagram, but you don't have an iPad app. Why did you put so much effort
00:59:40 ◼ ► Better video conferencing support. I mean, I, you kind of referenced this, but I don't really
00:59:45 ◼ ► understand what the issues are here. Cause I guess I don't do a lot of video conferencing.
00:59:49 ◼ ► The impression I, so I heard about this from a reader and, um, I think the idea there is he said,
00:59:54 ◼ ► not just audio, it's video too. I have these video conference apps that insist on being full screen.
00:59:58 ◼ ► And it's, again, it's one of these kind of legacies where they're insisting on being full screen.
01:00:02 ◼ ► Now this is an example where I don't know whether that is just an app that has decided to
01:00:06 ◼ ► ban multitasking, um, or whether they are doing that or are forced to do that because of the way
01:00:12 ◼ ► the video and audio subsystems of iOS work. I don't know, but given the complexities of audio stuff,
01:00:23 ◼ ► But his frustration is he wants to have his office video conferencing app open side by side with like
01:00:28 ◼ ► a document. And he says that at least with the apps that they use, uh, they can't do that. So
01:00:33 ◼ ► I just wanted to kind of throw that in there as yes, this is a thing that, that the iPad needs
01:00:38 ◼ ► to be better at is like, you should be better at doing anything you need to do in multitasking.
01:00:51 ◼ ► So then as an advancement to multitasking, we could be looking at tabbed app instances. And this
01:00:59 ◼ ► is like a thing that I keep seeing people like Steve Troutsmith talking about. Um, I think Steve
01:01:04 ◼ ► thinks that this is not only a good way for it to go, but believes that this is the way the iOS 13
01:01:10 ◼ ► will go. So this is like, if you imagine looking at different web pages in Safari or Chrome and you
01:01:15 ◼ ► have tabs, well, imagine that you were using Google docs and you had tabs in Google docs,
01:01:32 ◼ ► Yeah, I think so the basic version of this is apps should be able to think of it as opening
01:01:39 ◼ ► multiple windows, like on, on a Mac apps can open multiple windows on the iOS. You really can't do
01:01:46 ◼ ► that. Although Safari does it, you can have two Safari windows running side by side. And so the
01:02:03 ◼ ► I don't know. Or if that's just multiple panes. Anyway, so the point here is let other apps do
01:02:08 ◼ ► it, have this be a system wide function. Um, I think this has the, the assumption everybody's
01:02:12 ◼ ► making here is that that's going to go along with the marzipan stuff. Like you're going to have to
01:02:17 ◼ ► have the ability on the Mac to potentially have multiple windows open. How do you reference that
01:02:21 ◼ ► on iOS? And the answer is you could have tabs or you could have at least a side by side kind of
01:02:27 ◼ ► thing. There are other uses here too. Like the flexibility this gives you. Yes. It means that I
01:02:31 ◼ ► can run Microsoft word with two docs side by side. It also means that I could have like Safari and
01:02:36 ◼ ► another app open in split view, but also have a different Safari view in slide over. Let's say
01:02:42 ◼ ► like that could be cool. Like again, not for every use, but it increases the flexibility of the
01:02:48 ◼ ► OS to have all the apps be able to tap into this. And yes, beyond that, you start to say,
01:02:52 ◼ ► how do you deal with lots of different apps running in different places? Maybe there's a tab
01:02:58 ◼ ► tab interface where the tabs are different apps. Um, I'm not sure Apple wants to go there. That's
01:03:03 ◼ ► a very different interface approach from iOS today, but, uh, you know, but who knows, but
01:03:08 ◼ ► something like that at the very least, we all, I think want to see the ability for apps to have
01:03:13 ◼ ► multiple instances running at once. And something that I hear people talk about quite a lot is,
01:03:20 ◼ ► um, multiple user logins. Yeah. And I heard about this from a bunch of people. Um, it's not a
01:03:27 ◼ ► feature that I care about because I don't share my iPad pro with the rest of my family, but there are
01:03:33 ◼ ► a lot of people who do. I think Apple's argument is like, you know, this is, this is a pro product,
01:03:38 ◼ ► but the reality is people share these devices and at a thousand dollars, uh, people are going to
01:03:42 ◼ ► share these devices. Still, they're not going to just say, no, no, no. Uh, this one's expensive.
01:03:48 ◼ ► Nobody else can use it. A lot of people, these are iPads or shared devices. iPhones are personal
01:03:51 ◼ ► devices. Dan Morin wrote a thing in Mac world last week about it. Um, and he made a point,
01:03:56 ◼ ► like it goes beyond the iPad. Like there are assumptions Apple makes about one device for
01:04:01 ◼ ► one person that work on the iPhone and that start to break down with the iPad and with the home pod
01:04:07 ◼ ► and a little bit with the Apple TV. But I think the home pod is another great example where
01:04:10 ◼ ► it doesn't recognize different people. It will only tie to one Apple ID. If you have one Apple ID
01:04:16 ◼ ► because it doesn't recognize other people and you turn personalized like music suggestions on,
01:04:20 ◼ ► then everything, everybody uses that home pod is now feeding data into your personal account,
01:04:25 ◼ ► which I had to turn that off. Cause I'm like, wait a second. I don't want the random songs
01:04:29 ◼ ► my daughter plays to be influencing my for you data on, on my Apple music. Like I'm not,
01:04:35 ◼ ► I don't want that. I want to keep my data, the, the stuff that I'm playing. Um, and it just,
01:04:40 ◼ ► it has no way of doing that. Um, I, I think this all goes together, which is Apple has to deal with
01:04:45 ◼ ► this idea of devices that are shared and how does it go? We got face ID, can face ID do multiple,
01:04:51 ◼ ► uh, multiple views. Cause that would be the nice way to do it is to have your face ID, like,
01:04:56 ◼ ► like touch ID actually, uh, on max, uh, detect who you are and log you into your user. But that adds
01:05:05 ◼ ► all this complexity of having a logged in and logged out state. But I heard from a lot of people
01:05:10 ◼ ► who say they really, really want this cause they want to be able to use their iPad and then like
01:05:13 ◼ ► flip it into a different mode where their kids can use it. And they only have, you know, they don't
01:05:17 ◼ ► have access to their emails and stuff like that. It's just the kids stuff. And, um, I get it,
01:05:23 ◼ ► I get it. That's a hard problem to solve and Apple has not shown a lot of interest in solving it,
01:05:28 ◼ ► but they have had some sort of version of this in education for a couple of years now. And, uh,
01:05:56 ◼ ► I'm sure, dear listener, that you have many things that demand your time. You have work to do,
01:06:00 ◼ ► you have side projects to complete in your evenings. And let's be honest, you have some
01:06:04 ◼ ► stuff you want to do for yourself. Video games you want to play. Maybe you're working through
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01:08:10 ◼ ► questions. Thank you very much. Jacob wants to know, or maybe Jacob. I'm going to go with Jacob,
01:08:16 ◼ ► though. Do you guys set up your iPad just like your iPhone or do you do it completely different?
01:08:26 ◼ ► Now, Jacob said that he did it differently and now was trying it with his iPhone and it made
01:08:31 ◼ ► more sense to him. And I understand that. You know, if that's your thing, because like consistency,
01:08:35 ◼ ► but like I think of these devices as two completely different things. I mean, even down to the fact
01:08:41 ◼ ► that the dock on the iPhone is four apps. The dock on the iPad is like 12, right? Like that's
01:08:48 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah, it's completely different. I have some of the apps on my first page of my home screen are
01:08:56 ◼ ► Yeah, like I have some devices that I don't like. I have apps on my iPhone. I don't have apps on,
01:09:01 ◼ ► but I don't have the same apps on my iPad and vice versa, right? Like I have the apps that I need on
01:09:06 ◼ ► each device. And I will say that I set both of my iPads up practically identically. You know, I do
01:09:13 ◼ ► it manually and I try and keep those relatively the same. Like for example, the 12.9 inch iPad
01:09:20 ◼ ► Pro I think can have one or two extra apps in the dock than the 11. But I don't put that extra app
01:09:32 ◼ ► brain. I do put basically the minimum minus one in there. And I also have a folder too, where I have
01:09:39 ◼ ► a bunch of little utilities that I frequently use in multitasking. I pop that in there too.
01:09:44 ◼ ► Jim wants to know if Myke is still using Gboard. I am still using Gboard on my iPhone. I'll tell
01:09:52 ◼ ► you why. The two reasons, three reasons I use Gboard and continue to use it. One, emoji search.
01:09:59 ◼ ► You can search for emoji in Gboard. Two, swipe typing. I use swipe typing an awful lot. Helps me
01:10:05 ◼ ► use my phone with one hand. It's really awesome. Three, the dictionary, the auto correction.
01:10:11 ◼ ► That is better for me on Gboard for a couple of reasons. One, I just find that it gives me better
01:10:17 ◼ ► results. And two, I think that they use some Google search stuff. You know, so like if I type in
01:10:22 ◼ ► Pokemon, the options right now come up to say, let's go. They're like the two things I can tap
01:10:32 ◼ ► So they kind of tailor the dictionary for that. It's what I believe is going on because I see
01:10:37 ◼ ► this stuff happen quite a lot. I will recommend if you want to try Gboard on your iPhone,
01:10:43 ◼ ► I don't use it on my iPad because the keyboard is not very good on the iPad. If you want to try it
01:10:48 ◼ ► on your iPhone, you need to get rid of the other keyboard. You have to go all in. So you're used to
01:10:57 ◼ ► it. So you understand all the limitations. You understand that sometimes when you have to enter
01:11:01 ◼ ► passwords, you won't get your auto correct, right? It's going to give you the regular keyboard. You
01:11:06 ◼ ► really need to understand it so you can really try it out. So you add this keyboard and then when you
01:11:11 ◼ ► go back into keyboard settings, once you've added a second keyboard, you can actually delete the,
01:11:17 ◼ ► say like, United Kingdom or American English or whatever keyboard you can remove it. Apple standard
01:11:22 ◼ ► keyboard can go. And then you have just Gboard. So if you want to try it, I really recommend going
01:11:28 ◼ ► all in on it for like a week. And if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you, but
01:11:31 ◼ ► it really works for me. I'm a big fan of it. They've gotten way better updating it as well,
01:11:37 ◼ ► right? Like they have like the new emoji. When there's new emoji, they have it in a couple of
01:11:41 ◼ ► days now. And it used to take a long time, but I think that team is pretty focused. So they seem
01:11:46 ◼ ► to get the updates out quick. Yep. I use it too. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. I have
01:11:52 ◼ ► both now. There were some really weird cases where the, where Gboard was quitting and I was left with
01:11:56 ◼ ► no keyboard. So I totally happens. It crashes sometimes. But I do use it a lot. And there are
01:12:02 ◼ ► moments where for whatever reason, I'm getting very frustrated with typing out things where
01:12:07 ◼ ► I will, I don't, I don't swipe type all the time, but there are, I will go through periods where I
01:12:12 ◼ ► do because I'm frustrated that, you know, or I need to get something out really fast with lots
01:12:17 ◼ ► of words in it. And the swipe typing is much better at that. Yeah. Like this is what I'm
01:12:21 ◼ ► saying about like go all in. So you understand the frustrations. Sometimes the keyboard crashes,
01:12:25 ◼ ► but there's a couple of things, right? So like all of the stuff with the quick type bar. So like the
01:12:29 ◼ ► two factor authentication codes, the new password stuff in iOS 12, you still get all of that. Like
01:12:36 ◼ ► that actually is like a separate thing. It still exists when you have a third party keyboard. So
01:12:40 ◼ ► you don't lose out on that awesome functionality. So it's worth bearing in mind. Um, that's because
01:12:45 ◼ ► by the way, when you go into a password field, uh, iOS flips you out to the standard keyboard.
01:12:57 ◼ ► it's not really practical for me to use an iPad as a laptop replacement in part because of the
01:13:02 ◼ ► strict requirements of the app store. Do you think Apple will ever let you install unverified apps
01:13:06 ◼ ► on iOS? Do you think they need to, uh, no and no. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And I would,
01:13:12 ◼ ► I would actually rephrase this question. Um, I don't think that, I mean, unless you're saying
01:13:21 ◼ ► it's not practical for me to use an iPad because I want to run BitTorrent and BitTorrent apps are
01:13:30 ◼ ► I don't think that that's a good enough excuse in most cases. I think that Apple has started,
01:13:35 ◼ ► uh, you know, there's, they have opened up a lot in the app store and the stuff that is not allowed,
01:13:41 ◼ ► you know, I will say this, that if there is a development tool for that runs on the iPad,
01:13:48 ◼ ► that is going to enable people to do what they do now, which is, you know, do on the iPad running
01:13:53 ◼ ► a custom build of something that you download from GitHub and you run it and it's just for you.
01:13:57 ◼ ► There'll be more of that. Perhaps you can do that now with downloading things for Xcode and then
01:14:03 ◼ ► installing them on your device. There, there are ways, but not to distribute them more widely and,
01:14:08 ◼ ► and more easily. And I agree with you, Myke. Um, it's never going to happen. Like a complete
01:14:13 ◼ ► sideloading of iOS apps. No, I just don't think it's ever going to happen. Yeah. They're not going
01:14:18 ◼ ► to do it. And I don't think they need to either. Right. Like, and I think, you know, the best,
01:14:23 ◼ ► the best example of this is like what they've tried to do and kind of, I think mostly failed,
01:14:31 ◼ ► close up that system a little bit more by being able to offer the greatness of the Mac app store,
01:14:38 ◼ ► but turns out just didn't work really well. And what they're trying to do now with the Mac app
01:14:43 ◼ ► store, I think is, is indicative of what they would do with the iOS app store, which is if
01:14:48 ◼ ► there's a need, they will find ways to rather than just let you sideload. They're going to find ways
01:14:53 ◼ ► to create entitlements for apps that are get that grant them more access. And that entitlement has
01:15:01 ◼ ► to be improved. Like the best example that doesn't come people who argue this don't talk about is
01:15:07 ◼ ► CarPlay. Where like, you can't just write a CarPlay app. Apple has to actually approve,
01:15:13 ◼ ► especially your ability to access CarPlay. And they only do it for a very limited number of apps.
01:15:19 ◼ ► There are not very many CarPlay apps. And one of the reasons that that is true is not because
01:15:24 ◼ ► people aren't trying it's because Apple won't let you. And so, you know, if it turns out there's a
01:15:28 ◼ ► real need for a certain kind of access, Apple doesn't have to give that access to everybody.
01:15:33 ◼ ► They can say this is a specific entitlement and only certain apps will be granted it. And every
01:15:37 ◼ ► other app that tries to use it will be rejected. And I think more of that is more likely in the
01:15:47 ◼ ► developers are like, we can't make this whole class of apps because of this. I think Apple's
01:15:51 ◼ ► going to be more open to the idea of saying, all right, maybe there's a way for us to do that.
01:15:56 ◼ ► What they're not going to do is say, sure, go ahead. They're going to say, we spent a year and
01:16:00 ◼ ► built this whole structure for this particular entitlement. And now you can ask for it.
01:16:11 ◼ ► TV shows and movies? It seems that with iTunes cloud integration, it's no longer necessary.
01:16:20 ◼ ► period. I don't do a local backup of my device in any way. Certainly not for media. And I don't
01:16:25 ◼ ► do local backups of the device. No, it's all in iCloud. I'm not interested in using iTunes. The
01:16:30 ◼ ► only thing I use iTunes for in relation to iOS these days is that I will use it to get to the
01:16:36 ◼ ► file transfer stuff so I can transfer across a wire, big audio files. But that's about it.
01:16:47 ◼ ► downloaded on my iMac, it will be backed up by Time Machine, I guess, but I don't download
01:16:52 ◼ ► anything on my iMac. So like, no. I even treat my iTunes purchases as streaming purchases.
01:17:00 ◼ ► If I buy an iTunes TV series, it very rarely is downloaded anywhere. Like I'm just playing it
01:17:09 ◼ ► something. - Exactly. I understand why people say this because I know that weird rights changes,
01:17:24 ◼ ► they're generally errors. The stories generally turn out to be mistakes because if you buy
01:17:29 ◼ ► something and then it goes off sale in the iTunes store, whether it's an app or a piece of music or
01:17:34 ◼ ► a movie or a TV show, generally you still get it. People who bought it still get it. It stays on the
01:17:41 ◼ ► servers. You can still download it. New people can't buy it. And when you hear those stories,
01:17:46 ◼ ► they're like, "Oh, I bought this thing and then Apple just made it disappear and they didn't care."
01:17:49 ◼ ► That happened a few months ago and it turned out it was a mistake. It was a bug. It was not
01:17:57 ◼ ► - I imagine that even, let's say that they did do it, right? Like there was something that got
01:18:03 ◼ ► removed at some point. I don't think having a backup of it is going to help you, right?
01:18:17 ◼ ► I'm not going to guarantee it 100% of the time, but I do not download media from Apple unless I'm
01:18:38 ◼ ► My iCloud backup is a backup, but my media stuff, it's just, that's where that stuff lives.
01:18:44 ◼ ► - But I will also just say, I try everything I can to not buy media now. I prefer to stream,
01:18:52 ◼ ► right? I don't buy music. I stream my music. I only ever buy TV shows and movies when they're
01:19:00 ◼ ► not on a streaming service I pay for. And they're the only types of media that I do buy now.
01:19:04 ◼ ► Because I just prefer to stream and I figure there's always going to be a streaming service
01:19:13 ◼ ► I don't really think, especially music, and for lots of video content, I just don't really
01:19:21 ◼ ► think of owning it anymore. It's just not really how I think of it. I pay what I consider to be a
01:19:26 ◼ ► relatively small amount of money for the amount of new stuff that I consume. If I bought everything
01:19:32 ◼ ► that I consumed, it would be a lot more money than my streaming bills cost me. Right? Can you
01:19:38 ◼ ► imagine that? If I paid for all the albums that I listen to these days, I'd be paying a lot of money
01:19:55 ◼ ► If you have a question that you would like to submit for a later episode, you can just send
01:20:01 ◼ ► them in with the hashtag #AskUpgrade. And thank you to everybody that has done that today.
01:20:07 ◼ ► We do have one more wonderful segment today, and that is going to be our discussion of the movie
01:20:12 ◼ ► My Neighbor Totoro. But before we get to that, let me thank our final sponsor for today's show,
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01:20:24 ◼ ► could use it as a second display for your Mac? That's what Luna Display will let you do. Your
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01:20:49 ◼ ► You just pop that wonderful dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. Even if you have a Wi-Fi
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01:21:36 ◼ ► and promo code UPGRADE at checkout. I say listener of the show Brent sent in a video that he took
01:21:42 ◼ ► showing him using the Luna Display the other day, which I thought was awesome, to airdrop a file
01:21:47 ◼ ► from the Mac to his iPad. It's like, "Oh, that's nice." Right? Because you're able to do that with
01:21:54 ◼ ► the Luna Display. I thought that was really, really cool. Our thanks to Luna Display for
01:21:57 ◼ ► their support of this show and Relay FM. So, my neighbor Totoro. So, why did you choose this
01:22:05 ◼ ► movie for me, Jason? Uh, it is a beloved movie in my house and across the world. It is from the
01:22:12 ◼ ► 80s, which is sort of what we try to stick with with our, uh... This movie is as old as me, 1988.
01:22:18 ◼ ► Yes, um, it is, well, I just turned to dust and blew away. Um, and although the, as my daughter
01:22:26 ◼ ► asked me, um, when, uh, because we usually watch the, uh, the dub version, uh, rather than the
01:22:34 ◼ ► Japanese with English subtitles, the dub is from 2006. Right. So, the movie is from '88, but it has
01:22:41 ◼ ► actors in it that are like, "Well, that person wasn't alive in '88." But the mainstream English
01:22:47 ◼ ► dub version that's out there these days is from 2006. The movie's from '88. I first saw it,
01:22:54 ◼ ► I don't know, probably, yeah, 2008, 2010, 2012. It was not that long ago that I... So, it seems
01:23:00 ◼ ► more recent to me than it actually is. And I think for most Americans, that's probably true because
01:23:06 ◼ ► I think our understanding of Hayao Miyazaki, the brilliant Japanese animation director,
01:23:13 ◼ ► uh, in America, he went mainstream a little bit later than, you know, he was a huge star in Japan.
01:23:30 ◼ ► and you said beloved movie, which I think is funny. Um, I'm very familiar with the character
01:23:38 ◼ ► Seen it, you know, as somebody who loves Pusheen, like, Pusheen and Totoro go together quite nicely.
01:23:44 ◼ ► They're really color, right? Um, I know the Umbrella bus stop image very well, right? Like,
01:23:51 ◼ ► it's just like an iconic image. Um, so I asked, like, a question. Is Totoro an imaginary friend?
01:23:58 ◼ ► That was my thought going into the movie. Like, is Totoro an imaginary friend? Is that what Totoro
01:24:03 ◼ ► is? We'll find out. Interesting question. Um, and then also, just as a note, this is my first
01:24:07 ◼ ► ever Miyazaki movie. I've never seen a Miyazaki movie before. Wow. Well, we're, I realized that,
01:24:12 ◼ ► that depending on how this goes, we may rapidly move on to Kiki's Delivery Service, but, uh,
01:24:29 ◼ ► they will be upset at the fact that I watched the dubbed movie. I watched the, I'm sure, I'm sure
01:24:34 ◼ ► that would upset that person. I just, there are purists out there, and it's true if you want to
01:24:39 ◼ ► get closest to the Japanese, uh, spirit because the dubs have to match the, the sort of the mouth
01:24:45 ◼ ► movement and what's on screen. And so they don't always impart all the same information that you
01:24:49 ◼ ► would get in the translation of what they're saying in Japanese. And I get that at the same
01:24:54 ◼ ► time for an animated movie. I do have this other feeling, which is it's all dubbed in a way because
01:25:01 ◼ ► there are, there are drawings with somebody's recorded voice underneath them, but I get it.
01:25:06 ◼ ► I have watched it with the subs before, but I didn't watch it with the subs this time either.
01:25:25 ◼ ► they never say what, but it's clearly something very bad. We'll talk about that a little bit more.
01:25:29 ◼ ► Yeah, I think I assume tuberculosis, but yeah. Okay. And that's your villain in the film,
01:25:38 ◼ ► bad person in this. Um, and, uh, so they, they're moving to the country because I guess
01:25:44 ◼ ► it will be better for her. Um, once she hopefully gets better and the movie is focused around the
01:25:51 ◼ ► two girls, uh, Satsuki and Mei. Now I had just assumed that Mei would be the main focus of the
01:25:57 ◼ ► movie and like after the establishing part that, um, Satsuki would, would fade into the background,
01:26:04 ◼ ► but that wasn't the case. Um, no, Satsuki's the main character and Mei is, is just this,
01:26:09 ◼ ► uh, adorable little sister who does. And I liked that. It wasn't what I expected, but, but I,
01:26:14 ◼ ► but I enjoyed that. I will say this movie perfectly captures the relationship of a younger sibling.
01:26:21 ◼ ► Doesn't it? Doesn't I, I, as having, I never had, uh, close aged siblings, but having had two kids
01:26:28 ◼ ► who were three years apart, um, I laugh at that so much because it's so true. Like the just,
01:26:34 ◼ ► there's a scene where they're going through the house and Mei just keeps basically doing exactly
01:26:38 ◼ ► what Satsuki already did. And repeating everything and repeating everything she says and all of that.
01:26:44 ◼ ► And, and she says, I'm going to go do this thing. It's like, oh, can I come too? Like that's the
01:26:48 ◼ ► little sister is just following her around and doing everything she does. It's adorable.
01:26:57 ◼ ► which I really liked and they did a great job. I thought that it was real. Their performance was
01:27:02 ◼ ► excellent. Um, like you could show me that movie and I don't think I would have known it was dubbed.
01:27:06 ◼ ► I guess the only giveaway would have been for me, which is a little bit interesting. You kind of,
01:27:10 ◼ ► I kind of just had to put it to the back of my mind of like, this is clearly Japan and these are
01:27:14 ◼ ► clearly American accents, right? Like I had to like, just try and just forget that. And I was
01:27:19 ◼ ► able to after the first couple of minutes, but like at first it was a bit like, this is very
01:27:24 ◼ ► Japanese, like what I'm seeing here, right? Like we're not even in a city, you know, like, um, but
01:27:30 ◼ ► we're just forget about that. But, um, there were, you know, I, I liked a lot of the little moments,
01:27:38 ◼ ► right? Like the first time that they come into contact with the Sook Gremlins is really funny
01:27:42 ◼ ► to me. You know, like the girls trying to be brave and like, I enjoyed all of that stuff. Like the
01:27:47 ◼ ► way that they were clearly troublemakers, right? But we're all so scared at many points. And I
01:27:53 ◼ ► really enjoyed just how much trouble those sisters would cause. Like when they effectively nearly
01:27:59 ◼ ► bring the whole house down in the beginning, right? Where they're just pulling on that beam
01:28:04 ◼ ► and everything's just starting to crumble around them. Like I just, that was very funny. They're
01:28:08 ◼ ► like, the dad had, he seems to have his work cut out for him a lot of the time. Yeah. But he's a
01:28:13 ◼ ► cool dad, right? He is a cool dude. They come in and they say, they say, this is, uh, the dad,
01:28:18 ◼ ► the house is haunted. And he's like, great. I've always wanted to live in a haunted house.
01:28:23 ◼ ► Yeah. I really like this character. Lauren and I both were watching this and we're like,
01:28:26 ◼ ► he's a good dad. Yeah. He's a very good dad. And like when they're all scared and he starts laughing,
01:28:35 ◼ ► starts laughing at the top of his voice, like get rid of the monsters and the ghosts that way. It
01:28:38 ◼ ► was really cool. Um, I want to ask you something, cause it seemed interesting to me. Um, and I
01:28:43 ◼ ► couldn't quite work it out if I, if it was a different thing to most movies or if I just
01:28:48 ◼ ► wasn't noticing it so much, there are a lot of like panning shots with landscapes and it looked
01:28:55 ◼ ► really different. Like it feels like a thing I don't see in animated movies a lot. I couldn't
01:29:00 ◼ ► work out what it was, but it seemed like there was some interesting like camera moves going on
01:29:13 ◼ ► I don't know about the camera moves. I will say that Miyazaki loves landscapes. He loves
01:29:19 ◼ ► showing a lush foliage. He loves clouds. I love the way water was shown. It's very impressive.
01:29:26 ◼ ► Yeah. There's that, that thing where the little, something like pops up out of the water and there
01:29:30 ◼ ► you watch the ripples and then it just kind of moves on. He loves that stuff. It's incredibly
01:29:34 ◼ ► detailed. It's beautiful. Most, I would say most films, uh, animated films do not lavish that much
01:29:41 ◼ ► time and effort on the beauty of the surroundings, but something that, that is very clear in all of
01:29:46 ◼ ► Miyazaki's movies, but it's clear in this one is that he, he does a lot of stuff about the
01:29:51 ◼ ► environment and about people interacting with the environment and treating it badly and how we
01:29:56 ◼ ► should treat it better. There's a line in here about how this is, you know, there was a lot of
01:30:00 ◼ ► these things before we started cutting down all the trees or something like that that happens.
01:30:05 ◼ ► And so you also, he shows a lot of his imagery in his movies is kind of like, uh, look at this
01:30:10 ◼ ► beautiful lush environment. This is rural Japan, or this is Japan as it used to be. And that's
01:30:14 ◼ ► definitely a theme that he's trying to get it. His environmentalism, he puts it into the kind
01:30:19 ◼ ► of beautiful scenery of the countryside and it's just, it is beautiful. Every, I put on this movie
01:30:24 ◼ ► and the first thing I say is, oh, look at those clouds. They're great. One thing that was striking
01:30:31 ◼ ► to me was how much silence there is in this movie. It felt very different to a regular animated movie.
01:30:36 ◼ ► Not a lot of like, of soundtrack, right? Like there's not a lot of music playing in the
01:30:47 ◼ ► And I was, I think that struck me a little bit. It's like, huh, that's, that's, that feels different
01:30:52 ◼ ► to most animated movies that I would see. Like tension being built by silence or there just being
01:30:58 ◼ ► no music. Like there's just none, you know, and it's just like, here is some peace. And it was
01:31:02 ◼ ► like, huh, it just seemed very different to me as, and I think I kind of liked that a lot. Um, it
01:31:08 ◼ ► didn't help my overall feeling of dread about what was going to happen to the mum. Like, ah, right. I
01:31:16 ◼ ► was very, very nervous about, uh, the, what seemed inevitable death of the mum in this family.
01:31:27 ◼ ► One of the funny things about these Miyazaki movies is that we do bring our Western anticipation
01:31:33 ◼ ► of story structure onto the movie. And something that I've learned about, about Miyazaki movies
01:31:45 ◼ ► a villain. I keep expecting a traditional linear plot and I keep expecting things that are dramatic
01:31:52 ◼ ► that happen in movies like the mom dying to have act right. And, and, and they, they don't, like I
01:31:58 ◼ ► said, who was the villain in this? Literally the villain in this movie is the illness that the
01:32:02 ◼ ► mother has. There are no people who are antagonists in this film. Um, Kiki's delivery service, uh,
01:32:09 ◼ ► which hopefully we'll watch sometime. The villain in that is the weather. Like that's it. The wind,
01:32:15 ◼ ► the wind is the enemy in that movie. There is no traditional antagonist. And so, yeah, you,
01:32:21 ◼ ► you kind of start expecting stuff that, uh, the movie doesn't just refuse us to deliver. It's not
01:32:26 ◼ ► that kind of movie. And it, I mean, there were, it was pretty heavy, right? Like they're talking
01:32:32 ◼ ► about the mom dying, right? Like that's the thing that happens when the telegram comes.
01:32:36 ◼ ► And when May goes missing later in the movie, they're like searching a pond to see if she
01:32:40 ◼ ► drowned. Right. And they find a shoe and they're like, is this her shoe? And she's like, Nope,
01:32:45 ◼ ► that's not her show. I noticed this time that we see her put on her shoes earlier. So we know
01:32:49 ◼ ► that's not her shoe. But, um, if only if you're paying attention, I only did it the 10th time I
01:33:01 ◼ ► Totoro, uh, does not sound the way I expected Totoro to sound. Totoro screams and shouts and
01:33:08 ◼ ► growls and roars. I was not expecting that. Um, honestly I was expecting Totoro to have a voice.
01:33:14 ◼ ► Well, he doesn't, he doesn't talk. Right. But he's, he's a, uh, they, they, they just make,
01:33:24 ◼ ► Totoro to be like as cute as Totoro's appearance is. Right. Where like the sounds that Totoro makes
01:33:33 ◼ ► are scary sounds. Um, yeah, yeah. Oh no. He, he roars really loudly and everything shakes.
01:33:39 ◼ ► Right. He's adorable. But the big Totoro, there is a small, medium and large Totoro, of course,
01:33:43 ◼ ► but the big, the big Totoro. The see-through Totoro, which I initially thought was like a ghost
01:33:48 ◼ ► that was like, it was like, aha, imaginary friend. Aren't they, aren't they? I mean, they're,
01:33:52 ◼ ► they're like wood spirits, I think so, so they can go through things and then they're not always there
01:33:57 ◼ ► and all of those sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so like, I don't, I don't have a, uh, feeling on
01:34:03 ◼ ► like a theory of this movie really. Like the imaginary friend thing seems obvious in some
01:34:08 ◼ ► places, but then like, there are parts that I don't have answers for. Like, how does Satsuki get to
01:34:16 ◼ ► Mei? How do they get to the hospital? Right. Like I don't have, except for the horrifying cat bus,
01:34:22 ◼ ► not like that. Do not like the door on the cat bus. No, thank you. That I didn't like that,
01:34:30 ◼ ► Jason. That upset me. I don't, I don't love it. I don't love it. I, I, the sound effect makes me
01:34:35 ◼ ► laugh because it's like a sci-fi sound effect. It's like, oh, it makes it even worse. Like,
01:34:40 ◼ ► why is the cat making that noise? Did not like the cat bus. Thank you very much. That's fair.
01:34:45 ◼ ► But no, I think I, we had this discussion on the incomparable. People can listen to it. Episode 144,
01:34:50 ◼ ► hanging with the totes. Um, it's a great episode. It's me and John Siracusa and Merlin man. And
01:35:12 ◼ ► leaves, they leave the corn on the window sill at the hospital at the end. Like they totally,
01:35:19 ◼ ► it is real. So it's not an imaginary friend, although you could think that, but they are
01:35:23 ◼ ► like magical tree spirits basically. Yeah. So it's like, I don't have a, an answer, right?
01:35:29 ◼ ► Because like if they would have just looked at the mom, that would have been one thing.
01:35:32 ◼ ► And if they would have just shown the corn on the window, that would have been another,
01:35:40 ◼ ► there's no way around that other than the fact that they were there, like they were definitely
01:35:46 ◼ ► there. Right. So I found that all very interesting. Like, I really liked this movie a lot. Um,
01:35:55 ◼ ► I liked it more when it was done and when it was happening because nothing horrifying and upsetting
01:36:00 ◼ ► happened. Right. Like that was my concern. So like now, no, having seen this and having you
01:36:06 ◼ ► said it to me, like if other, I think I will approach other Miyazaki movies differently,
01:36:21 ◼ ► very different from what we expect. Not necessarily expecting something that, you know,
01:36:31 ◼ ► even more because I really like movies where there are no stakes. Sometimes like I like watching
01:36:38 ◼ ► or like no like upsetting high stakes, right? Like an overall thing that must be overcome.
01:36:53 ◼ ► Delivery Service, which has a little bit more of a plot, but really not really. And this,
01:36:57 ◼ ► this movie is completely, I would say plot free and it is all about these little experiences and
01:37:03 ◼ ► you can just sit there and enjoy it and it's and look at the scenery and I love it. That's,
01:37:15 ◼ ► So much noise Totoro makes, like so much noise. But I, you know, I really loved all of the
01:37:25 ◼ ► characters. Like I loved all of the characters in this, you know, grandma is awesome. Like she's
01:37:29 ◼ ► super nice. I did find it a bit harsh when like, uh, when the, uh, they get the sandal and they're
01:37:36 ◼ ► like that guy's like, "Oh, grandma!" Like, what does he say? So they're like, "Oh, she's making
01:37:42 ◼ ► a mountain and now nothing again." Like, "Oh, she's overreacting." It's like, "All right. All right."
01:37:46 ◼ ► Like she's worried. I just found that kind of funny. Um, what's the name of the little boy?
01:38:11 ◼ ► but he's also very helpful and lends her his umbrella and all of that. And like is really
01:38:16 ◼ ► focused on trying to help find Mei, right? Like, this is a great movie, Jason. I'm really,
01:38:21 ◼ ► really happy I saw this. I'm glad you liked it. I really, really liked it. It makes me want to
01:38:25 ◼ ► watch Kiki's Delivery Service. Oh, yes. Well, we have to do that. We have to do that. That's,
01:38:30 ◼ ► that is, uh, that is great too. That is a very different looking movie, but, um, I love that
01:38:35 ◼ ► even more than this one. And this one is, is, is delightful. Yeah, the Totoro. They are adorable.
01:38:40 ◼ ► I believe the origin is, uh, troll. And you see that in the dub where it's like, "Oh, like the
01:38:45 ◼ ► trolls in your storybooks or whatever." But it says, you know, "Totoro," but that's the idea is
01:38:51 ◼ ► that it's just kind of like a little girl sort of mangling troll. Um, and that's, so it's not,
01:38:57 ◼ ► you know, that's, we call them Totoros, but they're just these little furry, adorable spirits,
01:39:03 ◼ ► um, that float around and are cute. And yes, and that scene, let's just say it, that scene at the
01:39:09 ◼ ► bus stop before the cat bus, I get the cat bus is creepy, but before that, where, uh, suddenly
01:39:16 ◼ ► he's there next to them and then they, then he's got the, the water is just very slowly dripping
01:39:24 ◼ ► onto his nose from his little leaf hat. And then they give him the umbrella and he doesn't really
01:39:29 ◼ ► know how to use it. And then he realizes that the drops are dropping onto it and making a loud
01:39:34 ◼ ► noise, which he really likes the loud noise. And then he decides to jump and have all the water
01:39:39 ◼ ► come out of the trees. It is a classic. I love that. It's a great scene. It all so much. Yeah.
01:39:44 ◼ ► Yeah. And obviously that's, that's like the part where as well, like some of the understanding of
01:39:50 ◼ ► what's going on starts to change because it's like, "Oh, uh, you, you think it might be all
01:39:55 ◼ ► the amazing imagination, but now Satsuki sees it too." Yeah. And it's like, that's where it's like,
01:40:00 ◼ ► "Oh, so what is going on?" And he takes the umbrella away with him on the cat bus. So that's
01:40:05 ◼ ► that. Yeah. What does that mean? Yes. It's very, very good. Very, very good. Love this movie,
01:40:10 ◼ ► Jason. Thank you for recommending it. Hey, that's great. So we have more to watch now in the future.
01:40:15 ◼ ► I want to see more of these. Yeah, they're good. You've made professor Syracuse very happy as well.
01:40:20 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't know how he's going to feel about the dubbing. That's okay. You know,
01:40:24 ◼ ► in advance, more advanced, uh, he's going to treat you like one of his children. He's going to be
01:40:27 ◼ ► like, "Oh, that's okay. Well, we'll start you out easy." But, uh, but yeah, it's a, it's a classic
01:40:32 ◼ ► and, and Miyazaki's movies are, are great, but my two favorite are Totoro and, uh, Kiki's Delivery
01:40:38 ◼ ► Service. So they are just, I, I, I watch them and I say, "Oh, I love more. I would love more
01:40:43 ◼ ► movies like this that are just pleasant to be, to, to be around." Like just, it's just nice to,
01:40:49 ◼ ► to go on the little journey and be in that world for a little while. And when Japan held,
01:40:54 ◼ ► hosted a World's Fair in 2005, they actually built the house that's in this movie. And I had that
01:41:02 ◼ ► thought while I was watching is like, "Wouldn't it be great to walk around that house?" And they built
01:41:06 ◼ ► that house for the World's Fair. It's amazing. That's awesome. That's really cool. All right.
01:41:11 ◼ ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. I hope that you have enjoyed
01:41:17 ◼ ► it as much as we have enjoyed putting it together for you. I'm going to put a link in the show notes
01:41:22 ◼ ► to, uh, an article on Kotaku of the Totoro house. Um, it looks like it's something, yeah, it was
01:41:28 ◼ ► built in 2005. They built a full-scale replica and it looks amazing. That looks super, super cool.
01:41:36 ◼ ► I think it's still something that you can maybe go and see. I don't know. I'll have to read up
01:41:40 ◼ ► on that. That looks like that's super amazing. I love that. Um, if you want to submit questions
01:41:46 ◼ ► always, you can send in a hashtag Snell Talk for the opening of the show, hashtag Ask Upgrade for
01:41:51 ◼ ► the end of the show. Um, I'd like to thank our sponsors for this episode, Simple Contacts,
01:41:56 ◼ ► Luna Display, PDF Pan from Smile and Holo for their support. Don't forget to go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com.
01:42:03 ◼ ► You have just until the 4th of December to buy our limited edition merchandise. Um, I'll be back