Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 187. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Casper, and Peacock. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Mr. Jason Snow. Hello, Jason Snow.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hi Myke, I'm back in my garage now and Alex Cox isn't like peering at me from behind a curtain.

00:00:27 ◼   ► So it's different. It would be concerning, I think. That would be a little weird, because

00:00:31 ◼   ► I didn't invite her over if she was lurking, but she's not.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Our #SnailTalk question this week comes from Will, and this is baseball-related because

00:00:40 ◼   ► I understand that the season is open, or however it is you refer to it in baseball world.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Sure. Yeah, the season is open. That's exactly what we say.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Open for play. Will wants to know, "Jason, if you had the ability to play for the Giants,

00:00:54 ◼   ► I believe, are your team. San Francisco Giants? What position would you want to play and what

00:00:59 ◼   ► would be your walk-up music?

00:01:03 ◼   ► Well position-wise, I always played, when I played baseball in like little league, I

00:01:10 ◼   ► was mostly a second baseman so I would probably choose that, although in rec softball in college

00:01:16 ◼   ► I sometimes played first base, so something like that.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So you're a catcher, you're in the field at that point, right?

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's not a catcher is a position that is not generic term, so you can't say I'm a catcher.

00:01:28 ◼   ► That would be literally the catcher is the person who sits behind home plate and catches

00:01:32 ◼   ► the pitches from the pitcher.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I did that a little bit too, but that's not for me.

00:01:37 ◼   ► But that's your predominant role, is it then, to catch the ball?

00:01:40 ◼   ► Do you ever hit the ball?

00:01:41 ◼   ► I don't know how baseball works.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I very well know you all, so everybody who plays in the field also has to hit the ball.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Except in some circumstances for the pitcher, who is sometimes swapped out for a person

00:01:52 ◼   ► who can hit. But that's complication levels we don't want to. When you're not a bat, when

00:01:56 ◼   ► you're not on that side, you would be standing at second base. That's where you want to be.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and actually the second, one of the things I had to learn when I was a kid and

00:02:02 ◼   ► I was playing second base is that you don't stand on the base when you're second base.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Second base is to toward the first base side of second base. You stand, because there's

00:02:11 ◼   ► a shortstop who stands on the other side of second base. Of course there is. It's complicated.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Anyway, my walk-up music, and I want to just mention because it makes me laugh every time

00:02:20 ◼   ► I think about it that my friend Philip Michaels has explained that his walk-up music would

00:02:25 ◼   ► be the Soviet national anthem, which just I think would be hilarious. I think that's

00:02:32 ◼   ► a wrestling reference, Myke. You might actually even get that one. Because I think there was

00:02:35 ◼   ► a wrestler who they played, he was supposedly the, he was a heel and he was from the Soviet

00:02:41 ◼   ► Union and everybody would boo him as he entered to the Soviet national anthem. Anyway, I think

00:02:46 ◼   ► it's got to be "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, right? Like, I think that would

00:02:50 ◼   ► have to be it. That's my walk-up music for the Pundit Showdown podcast when we did that

00:02:54 ◼   ► at Macworld. So I think that would have to be it.

00:02:59 ◼   ► That's a good choice, and honestly, if I would have written an answer for you, that would

00:03:03 ◼   ► have been the answer I would have written down. I know how much you love that song.

00:03:06 ◼   ► It's a great song! That's gotta be it. Gotta be it.

00:03:09 ◼   ► So we have some follow-up about iBooks Author. In the last episode, after we were talking

00:03:15 ◼   ► about the education event. We are under the impression that the inclusion of digital book

00:03:21 ◼   ► publishing tools or digital book creation tools, I should say, in pages meant that iBooks

00:03:25 ◼   ► author was going to be dead. But Serenity Caldwell confirmed with Apple that iBooks

00:03:29 ◼   ► author is continuing as its own standalone product and that the pages update is not a

00:03:34 ◼   ► replacement for it.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Continues to exist. We have our shovels out, we were ready to bury it, and Serenity broke

00:03:42 ◼   ► down the doors and was like, "No, no, no. It's still alive. Don't bury it yet." Although,

00:03:47 ◼   ► I have a hard time believing that they're going to put much effort into iBooks Author.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's more likely that they would upgrade the book publishing

00:03:56 ◼   ► stuff inside of Pages and then keep iBooks Author around just for the people who are

00:04:02 ◼   ► already using it. You can definitely do stuff with iBooks Author that you can't do with Pages.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And that format is still supported in iBooks and only iBooks. But this is good news for people.

00:04:12 ◼   ► like our friend David Sparks who do books in iBooks author format, that they can still

00:04:17 ◼   ► do that and it's okay.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And Jason, iBooks author remains a product in our lineup, but there is nothing more to

00:04:23 ◼   ► say about it today.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually asked somebody at Apple about it. I actually asked somebody at Apple and

00:04:29 ◼   ► I said, "So iBooks author continues to be a product?" And they said, "Yep." I was like,

00:04:34 ◼   ► "All right, well."

00:04:35 ◼   ► It will continue with the same or little as treatment as it has received over the last

00:04:41 ◼   ► few years.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I'm just imagining iBooks author giving Apple a big hug, like, "Thank you for keeping me

00:04:46 ◼   ► around and Apple's got its arms out." Like, "Mm, yeah, okay, stop hugging me now."

00:04:51 ◼   ► Or it's like it's going for the hug but it's making a face over iBooks author's shoulder.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Oh dear. Well, it still exists. It's still there. I mean, I guess it's good because there

00:05:04 ◼   ► are more tools in it, right? So my feeling is it exists for now. I would be very surprised

00:05:11 ◼   ► if they didn't just continue to make pages better or write quicker than they

00:05:15 ◼   ► make iBooks Author better, but we'll see.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And we didn't do any Upstream last week because of the event.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And there were a few interesting topics that we wanted to talk about.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So let's get into that right now.

00:05:26 ◼   ► We're going to start off by saying that Amy Apolo, you may know from Parks

00:05:29 ◼   ► and Recreation, who we mentioned in the last week's episode, because it was

00:05:31 ◼   ► your favorite of the two between Parks and Rec and The Office, is making her

00:05:35 ◼   ► directorial debut with Netflix.

00:05:38 ◼   ► It is a comedy movie called Wine Country, which tells the story of a group of old friends

00:05:43 ◼   ► who go to Napa for a weekend getaway to celebrate a 50th birthday.

00:05:46 ◼   ► It is a really great and huge cast, including Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, and many more.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So that's going to be interesting to see.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Tina Fey is of course going to be doing some kind of walk-on role in the movie, right?

00:05:59 ◼   ► She's going to be in it.

00:06:00 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm excited to see this.

00:06:03 ◼   ► So this is fascinating because this is one of those questions of would this have been

00:06:07 ◼   ► a, would this have been a movie before, a theatrical release before, and there's just

00:06:12 ◼   ► no room for it.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Or is this a smaller kind of story that would have been maybe 15, 20 years ago would have

00:06:20 ◼   ► been a TV movie or something, which they kind of don't do anymore, and so now it's a Netflix

00:06:25 ◼   ► movie.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I don't know, but I think this is interesting.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Well, it's like it never would have existed, right?

00:06:28 ◼   ► Like it maybe never would have happened.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Hell yeah, because a lot of stuff it's just, is there a place for something like this?

00:06:35 ◼   ► And the advantage of having these streaming services is that they aren't as constrained

00:06:41 ◼   ► as a theatrical release especially would be, and the networks don't do TV movies anymore.

00:06:46 ◼   ► So whether this is something that would have five or ten years ago been a relatively kind

00:06:52 ◼   ► of low-budget, low-to-mid-budget theatrical release, or whether it might have been in

00:06:57 ◼   ► the TV movie, like a little bit cheaper TV movie camp,

00:06:59 ◼   ► which now the TV movies only really are like on,

00:07:02 ◼   ► on like HBO or things like that,

00:07:04 ◼   ► or they're films released on Netflix.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So interesting.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And that's what, that is what, I mean,

00:07:11 ◼   ► I think Amy Poe is really funny

00:07:13 ◼   ► and this could be really good,

00:07:14 ◼   ► but I think it's also really interesting

00:07:15 ◼   ► that this is not necessarily a piece of content

00:07:18 ◼   ► that would otherwise have existed.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Other than having a platform like Netflix to put it.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - Common with a lot of these types of productions,

00:07:27 ◼   ► like her production company is producing it, um,

00:07:30 ◼   ► along with another production company owned by Morgan Secut,

00:07:32 ◼   ► who was a producer of Parks and Rec,

00:07:34 ◼   ► a Parks and Rec writer is writing it with her and she has,

00:07:38 ◼   ► and she's bringing in a lot of like colleagues and friends, right?

00:07:40 ◼   ► Like this is becoming extremely common with these types of movies because it's

00:07:46 ◼   ► like the stars have got enough money to put this type of thing together on a

00:07:51 ◼   ► small budget,

00:07:52 ◼   ► but they haven't got enough money to put it in cinemas.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Right. Because that's like a whole different thing.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Which means...

00:08:01 ◼   ► Well, you know, the marketing cost of a major motion picture is vastly more than the cost

00:08:06 ◼   ► to make the movie at this point.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Yep. So, you know, and so basically my expectation is, right, they cover the production side,

00:08:14 ◼   ► Netflix covers the marketing side, and they call it job done. And this allows for Amy

00:08:19 ◼   ► Poehler to get a directorial credit on her IMDb page, right? So she continues to build

00:08:23 ◼   ► herself up so like maybe in a couple years time she will have a feature film.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Like this is this is this is why a lot of this stuff is is like so hot right

00:08:32 ◼   ► now I think because it's allowing a lot of really talented creators to get their

00:08:37 ◼   ► foot in the door. Right well this is and and you see how the business I mean

00:08:42 ◼   ► there's a business aspect to this which is the money and the the strategizing

00:08:45 ◼   ► about like where where the money is going going to Netflix you know it's

00:08:49 ◼   ► going away from things like the networks and even some cable, but it also has this creative

00:08:55 ◼   ► of the in the end the money story, the business story becomes a creative story too because

00:09:00 ◼   ► there become outlets for stuff that wouldn't have existed before and opportunities. I was

00:09:06 ◼   ► going to say the another example of this is just prestige. The existence of prestige television

00:09:12 ◼   ► has completely melted the certainly for actors completely melted the distinction between

00:09:19 ◼   ► film and television. Film stars, Academy Award winners do television now. I could come up

00:09:26 ◼   ► with multiple examples of Academy Award winning actors and actresses who are stars of regular

00:09:33 ◼   ► TV shows now, right? I mean, I just watched the finale of Counterpart last night with

00:09:39 ◼   ► J.K. Simmons, who's an Oscar winner, and Allison Janney has a sitcom and she's an Oscar winner.

00:09:45 ◼   ► you know, the list goes on, that's completely melted away. And then for writers too, there's

00:09:50 ◼   ► that sense like writers, you know, TV is now a better place for writers and writers get

00:09:55 ◼   ► to kind of run the show in a way that they don't necessarily in features because features

00:10:00 ◼   ► are becoming more like a, you know, writers room that is dominated by the corporate organization

00:10:06 ◼   ► that is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in each release because it's got to

00:10:12 ◼   ► be marketed and targeted and all of those things. It's fascinating that you get, you

00:10:16 ◼   ► know, the money machinery gets tweaked by, in a lot of cases, technology changes, but

00:10:25 ◼   ► when the machine is running, then creative stuff pops out. And when you alter how the

00:10:30 ◼   ► machine runs, different creative stuff pops out. And this is a great example of that.

00:10:35 ◼   ► So yeah, it's fascinating. Here's an interesting one. YouTube have announced

00:10:40 ◼   ► a movie called Vulture Club. It stars Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon, Eddie Falco and

00:10:47 ◼   ► Matt Bomer. It's a drama.

00:10:49 ◼   ► multiple Emmy winner Eddie Falco.

00:10:53 ◼   ► It's a drama and YouTube are planning for a theatrical release in 2018 and it will be

00:10:59 ◼   ► released on YouTube Red afterwards. And you say to yourself, that's weird. Why are YouTube,

00:11:05 ◼   ► they have their own subscription service, why are they putting this movie into cinemas?

00:11:10 ◼   ► Let me tell you why. They want it to win an Oscar. That's why.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's it. That is actually becoming a very common thing. Amazon has done this

00:11:17 ◼   ► too in a few different ways, and there are a couple ways to do it. One way you can put

00:11:21 ◼   ► it in theaters is you can put it in a theater in New York and LA for a week, and it's eligible

00:11:27 ◼   ► for the Oscars. But another way that some of these companies are doing it is they're

00:11:31 ◼   ► giving it a theatrical release. Maybe not investing massively in marketing and all that,

00:11:37 ◼   ► but they give it a legitimate theatrical release and then they put it on their streaming service

00:11:41 ◼   ► afterward. And that qualifies it for awards and also potentially, you know, it gets in

00:11:46 ◼   ► talking to Tim Goodman from the Hollywood Reporter, one of the, which I do a podcast

00:11:50 ◼   ► with every week, one of the things that comes up is how hard it is to find stuff. And when

00:11:56 ◼   ► you're a consumer, but like also how does something get reviewed? Like does a Netflix

00:12:01 ◼   ► movie get reviewed? Do the movie reviewers review it? Do the TV reviewers review it or

00:12:07 ◼   ► does it get caught like lost in the cracks, right? One of the advantages of giving your

00:12:11 ◼   ► film a theatrical release before you put it on streaming is it's a movie. Everybody understands

00:12:16 ◼   ► it's a movie and the movie reviewers review it. Whereas Amy Poehler's thing like, "Who's

00:12:20 ◼   ► gonna review that?" Are movie reviewers gonna review it? Are TV reviewers gonna review it?

00:12:25 ◼   ► Or is it going to be a neither fish nor foul situation?

00:12:28 ◼   ► So lots of smart reasons for doing this.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Netflix goes back and forth on this too, where Netflix wants to win Oscars.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And they have.

00:12:36 ◼   ► They won an Oscar for documentary feature for that film about Russia and the Russian

00:12:41 ◼   ► doping scandal.

00:12:44 ◼   ► But Netflix also does direct-to-Netflix releases where they're not eligible, and presumably

00:12:48 ◼   ► they can win Emmy awards for that.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:51 ◼   ► It's just a decision they have to make.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Well on that note Netflix have been banned from Cannes because they are not going to be putting

00:12:58 ◼   ► their next movies in theaters. This is so ridiculous to me. This is so ridiculous. I find

00:13:04 ◼   ► this to be so old school and stupid. Like I don't understand why there is this like vice grip that

00:13:14 ◼   ► they're trying to hold on theater releases when I know that there is an industry of people there

00:13:21 ◼   ► that worked that way but there is a new industry building around streaming services and actors and

00:13:28 ◼   ► actresses are finding and all production companies are finding new success in streaming services that

00:13:34 ◼   ► wouldn't exist right we were just talking about that like that Amy Poehler movie may not have ever

00:13:38 ◼   ► existed but it can exist because Netflix will put the money into it but now they're being banned

00:13:43 ◼   ► from award ceremonies because they don't they don't want to kiss the ring of the old god I find it so

00:13:49 ◼   ► change. Yeah, basically the Cannes Film Festival is saying you can't be eligible for any awards

00:13:54 ◼   ► that can. You can screen your films if you want, but you can't be eligible for any awards unless

00:13:58 ◼   ► you get a full French theatrical release. And Netflix was like, "All right, we'll put it out

00:14:04 ◼   ► for a week in theaters and the whatever entity approves or disapproves that disapproved it."

00:14:10 ◼   ► So nope, that's not good enough. And you're right. It is, you know, look, at some point either

00:14:18 ◼   ► Netflix will decide that it's more important that they release the film in France because they want to get win the Palme d'Or in

00:14:25 ◼   ► at the Cannes Film Festival or

00:14:27 ◼   ► The Cannes Film Festival will say hey

00:14:30 ◼   ► We would be better off letting Netflix come regardless

00:14:35 ◼   ► Eventually something will give there, but you're right

00:14:39 ◼   ► It is it is resistance and fear and I get it if they are the extension of the cinema owners in France and

00:14:47 ◼   ► and more broadly around the world, then they may be saying, "Why should we give our

00:14:51 ◼   ► cachet to these people who don't want to be in our theaters?" I get it, but it does

00:14:57 ◼   ► seem a little foolish.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I understand it. I just think it's the wrong move. I mean, I think even, you

00:15:03 ◼   ► know, if you want to look down on them, create a best streaming movie award, right? Like,

00:15:07 ◼   ► they're not eligible for the big ones, but you can give them an award.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Yeah, well, eligibility, award eligibility is a little silly anyway, right? Like, the

00:15:15 ◼   ► Academy Awards, if I make a movie and it is the best two hour, you know, whatever is in

00:15:19 ◼   ► the, what is it, 60, 70 minutes, whatever the feature length is upward, and it's the

00:15:27 ◼   ► best one of those in the year, but it didn't go in theater in LA for a week. It just went

00:15:34 ◼   ► on to Netflix. But it's, by far, everybody agrees, the best movie of the year. Why shouldn't

00:15:38 ◼   ► it be eligible for an Oscar? And the answer is, well, there's got to be some eligibility

00:15:42 ◼   ► requirement and that's it. So you pay your money to a theater and what the film festival

00:15:47 ◼   ► is saying is, "No, that's not good enough. We're not going to let you skate in. You got

00:15:51 ◼   ► to be a real movie with a real release or we're not going to be about you." And fair

00:15:56 ◼   ► enough, I guess. It's their trophy. It's their festival. It's interesting that they're not

00:16:02 ◼   ► banning them from coming. They're just banning them from getting awards. They can come, you

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, pay us money, bring your--

00:16:09 ◼   ► - Please, please.

00:16:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, but just don't, anyway,

00:16:11 ◼   ► it is fascinating to see how industries

00:16:14 ◼   ► that are changing or dying react to that change.

00:16:18 ◼   ► And this is an example of that.

00:16:20 ◼   ► - And finally today, the New York Times

00:16:22 ◼   ► have a report about Apple's upcoming video service

00:16:25 ◼   ► and provide some information that we hadn't yet gotten,

00:16:29 ◼   ► or at least some clarifications

00:16:31 ◼   ► from wherever New York Times are getting their sources,

00:16:33 ◼   ► whether it's from Apple, which it very well could be,

00:16:35 ◼   ► or others.

00:16:37 ◼   ► I can tell you where they got this source because they actually said,

00:16:40 ◼   ► "Apple is saying to people that they're talking to now about doing shows."

00:16:44 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:16:46 ◼   ► That, so it's obviously from those people.

00:16:48 ◼   ► So they're getting it from movie executives, right?

00:16:50 ◼   ► Right, it's whoever they're making the deals with.

00:16:52 ◼   ► They're saying to those people that they're targeting spring or summer of 2019

00:16:58 ◼   ► to launch this thing, which I will refer you back to my previous,

00:17:05 ◼   ► I felt good when I read this.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I was like, oh, thank goodness.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Because it was, you know, I said like quite a while ago,

00:17:11 ◼   ► like almost a year ago now, that there's no way

00:17:13 ◼   ► that they could get this done before at earliest late '18.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And here we go.

00:17:20 ◼   ► They're actually not even going to try to hit late '18,

00:17:23 ◼   ► apparently.

00:17:23 ◼   ► It's going to be early to mid '19 before they get it out

00:17:28 ◼   ► there, because this stuff, it takes a long time

00:17:30 ◼   ► to make TV shows.

00:17:32 ◼   ► It really does.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And they've got to have enough of them ready to go that they

00:17:35 ◼   ► can start releasing them and promoting their service and they can't just trickle them out

00:17:40 ◼   ► episode by episode. They've got to get a bunch of them ready to go. So spring/summer 2019.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I expect we will probably start seeing the first trailers around iPhone time this year.

00:17:50 ◼   ► I think they might start trickling stuff out then to try and start building the excitement

00:17:56 ◼   ► for it. The New York Times also says that Apple is on track to spend significantly more

00:18:02 ◼   ► than the previously reported $1 billion budget.

00:18:05 ◼   ► I wonder if that was their content budget to get going in '17, and now that they're

00:18:10 ◼   ► in '18 or talking about '19, that they're like, "Well, that was the first billion.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Now we're into the next year.

00:18:17 ◼   ► Now we've got a couple more billion."

00:18:18 ◼   ► It could just be the possibility that when they started on this process, they found out

00:18:22 ◼   ► that people were a lot more open to them than they had originally thought that they would

00:18:25 ◼   ► be.

00:18:26 ◼   ► And now it's like, "Well, okay, we have a lot of interesting stuff on the table.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Let's wrap that budget up."

00:18:31 ◼   ► Right?

00:18:32 ◼   ► Keep in mind, it is rolling too.

00:18:35 ◼   ► They don't spend a billion dollars and then walk away.

00:18:37 ◼   ► To be honest, when you have a billion dollars

00:18:41 ◼   ► to spend on launching your service, guess what?

00:18:44 ◼   ► Year two, you spend a billion and a half more.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Year three, you spend two billion.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Year four, you spend four billion.

00:18:50 ◼   ► - And really, really hope that you've got

00:18:51 ◼   ► a lot of subscribers by that point.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Right, although your Apple, you've got a giant cash pile,

00:18:56 ◼   ► so you can afford to do that for a very long time.

00:18:58 ◼   ► So yeah, they're gonna keep spending money

00:19:00 ◼   ► and we're gonna keep talking about this in general

00:19:03 ◼   ► and about Apple's strategy in particular here,

00:19:06 ◼   ► but they keep making deals and they are gonna,

00:19:10 ◼   ► it's a real thing.

00:19:11 ◼   ► This is gonna be a real thing competing with Netflix

00:19:14 ◼   ► and Amazon and Disney and Hulu and anything else

00:19:19 ◼   ► that is out there.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Apple is gonna be an HBO and all of that.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Apple's gonna be in the fray.

00:19:25 ◼   ► This is all still a little theoretical now,

00:19:29 ◼   ► but it's gonna happen and we're gonna be,

00:19:32 ◼   ► they're gonna be Apple TV shows.

00:19:34 ◼   ► It's already in the works.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And so next year, I had that moment where 2019

00:19:38 ◼   ► seems so far away and then you realize

00:19:40 ◼   ► it's not that far away.

00:19:41 ◼   ► When I finished the season finale of Counterpart last night,

00:19:44 ◼   ► they ran a trailer that said season two, 2019.

00:19:47 ◼   ► I thought, oh God, 2019, oh, that's just next year, okay.

00:19:51 ◼   ► - I maintain like in thinking about this,

00:19:53 ◼   ► I'm really pleased we started doing this regular segment

00:19:55 ◼   ► because by the time this service comes around,

00:19:58 ◼   ► I'm gonna know so much about the way this business works

00:20:00 ◼   ► that like I'm gonna feel confident in talking about it.

00:20:02 ◼   ► You know?

00:20:03 ◼   ► - There's something to be said for the fact

00:20:05 ◼   ► that by getting on this early,

00:20:07 ◼   ► and we have heard from a few people who are like,

00:20:08 ◼   ► oh, I'm not as interested in that stuff.

00:20:09 ◼   ► - I get why people don't like it.

00:20:11 ◼   ► I mean, I understand.

00:20:11 ◼   ► - I think it's fascinating because it's a way

00:20:14 ◼   ► that technology changes are leading to massive changes

00:20:17 ◼   ► in this whole other industry

00:20:18 ◼   ► that most of us are consumers of in one way or another.

00:20:21 ◼   ► But Apple's presence in it, I think,

00:20:23 ◼   ► makes it even more a fit for the charter of this podcast

00:20:27 ◼   ► because we don't want to not pay attention to it,

00:20:30 ◼   ► and then Apple announces a service,

00:20:32 ◼   ► and we suddenly look up and go,

00:20:33 ◼   ► oh, what's this service about?

00:20:34 ◼   ► Like, we're talking about it from the very beginning

00:20:37 ◼   ► and trying to get a handle on what they're doing

00:20:39 ◼   ► and how they're doing it.

00:20:40 ◼   ► So I'm excited to see it,

00:20:42 ◼   ► and I'm excited to see the shows,

00:20:43 ◼   ► and I'm fascinated to see how they roll it out.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And will they, how do you communicate a trailer of content

00:20:48 ◼   ► for a service that you haven't announced?

00:20:50 ◼   ► And would they announce it six months in advance?

00:20:52 ◼   ► Or would they just say,

00:20:53 ◼   ► well, we've got something coming next year

00:20:55 ◼   ► that we're not gonna talk about,

00:20:56 ◼   ► but here's a trailer of whatever it is.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I don't even know how they communicate this stuff.

00:21:01 ◼   ► So that's gonna be fun to watch.

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00:22:31 ◼   ► So the education event was a week ago.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Yep.

00:22:35 ◼   ► And there's been a lot of discussion and thought that's come out since and I think it's good

00:22:40 ◼   ► that maybe we should touch on some of these things. I've got a couple of quotes that I

00:22:44 ◼   ► want to read and we can talk about some thoughts from some observers and I know there's some

00:22:48 ◼   ► stuff that you want to fill in as well having had some time to think about and discuss this

00:22:52 ◼   ► in a little bit more detail.

00:22:54 ◼   ► So first off, I want to read a couple of quotes

00:22:57 ◼   ► from Bradley Chambers, who was,

00:22:58 ◼   ► he's written some pieces for 9to5Mac.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Bradley, if you don't know Bradley,

00:23:02 ◼   ► has long managed large, huge deployments

00:23:04 ◼   ► for Apple devices in education.

00:23:06 ◼   ► So he knows what he's talking about.

00:23:07 ◼   ► And he actually has a regular column at 9to5Mac now,

00:23:10 ◼   ► which started a few weeks ago,

00:23:11 ◼   ► which is kind of the perfect time for him and for them.

00:23:14 ◼   ► So that was like, that was a good coup.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Bradley compared the 2018 event to the 2012 event.

00:23:20 ◼   ► That's what he was looking at in one of his articles,

00:23:22 ◼   ► because that 2012 event was the education event

00:23:24 ◼   ► that we mentioned where they introduced the textbooks.

00:23:27 ◼   ► And he kind of said that really,

00:23:29 ◼   ► if you look at that 2012 event,

00:23:31 ◼   ► everything that was announced hasn't really gone anywhere.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Like all the textbook stuff, it didn't make a big impact.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And so this is what he said,

00:23:39 ◼   ► "As I re-watched a 2012 keynote and pondered a 2018 keynote,

00:23:43 ◼   ► I realized that Apple is yet again trying to craft a future

00:23:45 ◼   ► for education that I am not sure fits with reality."

00:23:50 ◼   ► So Bradley cites some issues being device prices,

00:23:53 ◼   ► the timelines of having to implement new features

00:23:56 ◼   ► and kind of when Apple are introducing them,

00:23:58 ◼   ► and that potentially they're focusing on the wrong places.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And he talks about the fact that Google targets

00:24:03 ◼   ► IT departments with their features, not educators,

00:24:06 ◼   ► because that's where it's deployed.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And this is why Google are making headway.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And he says, "Google is touting ease of management

00:24:12 ◼   ► and deployment.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Apple is touting new apps with Apple Pencil support."

00:24:16 ◼   ► I really liked this because it's showing

00:24:18 ◼   ► some of the practicalities that go into these decisions

00:24:21 ◼   ► when Apple seems to be way more focused

00:24:24 ◼   ► on trying to woo people

00:24:25 ◼   ► and Google is maybe a little bit more down in the trenches

00:24:28 ◼   ► and showing IT departments why their stuff's easy to deploy.

00:24:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the whole thing here, I mean, look,

00:24:36 ◼   ► if you're Apple, you've got to go with what you've got.

00:24:38 ◼   ► You literally can't sell--

00:24:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they don't have the IT management stuff.

00:24:42 ◼   ► They don't have that down.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - You can't sell what you don't have.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Also, I would argue this is so familiar

00:24:46 ◼   ► and I think I said this last week,

00:24:47 ◼   ► But I mean, this is so familiar 'cause it's, you know,

00:24:50 ◼   ► when people are talking about this education market,

00:24:52 ◼   ► I hear a lot of market share arguments,

00:24:54 ◼   ► which again, Apple losing share

00:24:56 ◼   ► and Google gaining share is important,

00:24:58 ◼   ► but like Apple's goal is not purely market share.

00:25:02 ◼   ► So that's part of it.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And also I hear things that remind me of the old days

00:25:05 ◼   ► of the Mac versus PC in businesses,

00:25:08 ◼   ► where it comes down to who's got a better story

00:25:11 ◼   ► for the IT managers.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And back in those days, the answer was always,

00:25:15 ◼   ► Microsoft owns the minds of the IT managers.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Apple basically is trying to own the minds of the,

00:25:23 ◼   ► in those cases, it was like the workers and the executives

00:25:26 ◼   ► so that they say, well, yeah, I know it's easier

00:25:29 ◼   ► if you have Windows PCs, but we want Macs.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And here, Apple is trying to communicate to teachers

00:25:35 ◼   ► and talk about how great their products are for students

00:25:38 ◼   ► and how much students like them too.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And they're not as strong to the IT people.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And so this is a really familiar game in a lot of ways,

00:25:48 ◼   ► where Apple has to lean on the stuff

00:25:50 ◼   ► that it feels that it's stronger at

00:25:52 ◼   ► and make an argument that basically is like,

00:25:55 ◼   ► yeah, I know your tech administrator at your school

00:25:59 ◼   ► would rather just deploy a bunch of Chromebooks,

00:26:03 ◼   ► but look how much teachers and students love what we do.

00:26:07 ◼   ► You should probably authorize them to buy this

00:26:10 ◼   ► and tell your guy not to buy those Chromebooks.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And that's just, I mean, I think that's the game

00:26:15 ◼   ► they have to play, 'cause that's,

00:26:17 ◼   ► those are the cards they've got.

00:26:18 ◼   ► So they need to go that direction.

00:26:22 ◼   ► That's where their strength is.

00:26:23 ◼   ► They are trying to get better

00:26:25 ◼   ► in terms of the services stuff.

00:26:26 ◼   ► They're never gonna be as good as Google at it,

00:26:28 ◼   ► but they could be better.

00:26:30 ◼   ► I've actually heard a bunch of people say that,

00:26:32 ◼   ► like device management stuff,

00:26:34 ◼   ► that Apple should like buy Jamf,

00:26:36 ◼   ► because if like you need management stuff like Jamf

00:26:40 ◼   ► in order to get the iPad management to be good enough.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And so maybe, you know, maybe Apple should acquire there

00:26:48 ◼   ► or they should improve their own stuff,

00:26:49 ◼   ► but they're never gonna probably match Google

00:26:51 ◼   ► and Microsoft at that game,

00:26:53 ◼   ► but they've got this other game that they're pretty good at.

00:26:55 ◼   ► So that's sort of the game they're playing.

00:26:57 ◼   ► And, you know, it's a fascinating thing

00:27:02 ◼   ► to see this, such a similar story playing out

00:27:06 ◼   ► that played out involving Apple, you know,

00:27:09 ◼   ► not too many years ago with a completely different product set in a different market.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And then we have Carol Anna Milanese who is a frequent guest on Jason's show Download

00:27:20 ◼   ► on Relay FM. She was writing for Tech Pinions. This is a longer quote so give me a moment.

00:27:26 ◼   ► "I know many will evaluate Apple's opportunity only by considering the price of the new iPad,

00:27:31 ◼   ► which is of course high when compared to most Chromebooks and especially once you add the

00:27:35 ◼   ► case on the pencil or crayon. But a way I think about it is, with the iPad you get more

00:27:40 ◼   ► than a computing device, you get a camera, a video camera, musical instruments and now

00:27:44 ◼   ► a drawing board and support for AR. AR support is particularly interesting as it would allow

00:27:49 ◼   ► schools to experiment with more immersive teaching without having to invest in a separate

00:27:54 ◼   ► headset as is the case with VR and mixed reality. In this way justifying the price is much easier,

00:27:59 ◼   ► if you're investing in an iPad to continue focus on traditional work of text charts and

00:28:04 ◼   ► slides, you would be better served by a lower price device with a good productivity suite.

00:28:09 ◼   ► So this makes sense to me, right? But the thing is, I feel like when I look at stuff

00:28:15 ◼   ► like this, it's like perpetuating this idealistic view of teaching, which I don't know if it

00:28:19 ◼   ► exists, right?

00:28:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't either, and it definitely is, that's the Apple take on it. This is sort

00:28:28 ◼   ► of Apple, how Apple is selling this and it makes sense. I get what Apple is trying to

00:28:34 ◼   ► do here, right? And I like what it's trying to do, which is saying, "Look, with Apple,

00:28:38 ◼   ► you're making an investment on doing more with technology and with your students and

00:28:42 ◼   ► having them do AR and making videos and making music and all sorts of other things that Apple

00:28:51 ◼   ► has advantages over the competition in." I get that. I get the argument from the other

00:28:57 ◼   ► side as well that the price is pretty dramatically different and that in the end, teachers just

00:29:05 ◼   ► need to do and schools just need to do this stuff that they are required to do. And it's

00:29:10 ◼   ► not the wizzy AR stuff. It's the more prosaic testing and turning in reports and things

00:29:20 ◼   ► like that. At the same time, I gotta say, I don't like the idea that I think I see from

00:29:29 ◼   ► some people who argue essentially that what a computer is is a spreadsheet and a word

00:29:37 ◼   ► processor and a slide maker. Like, Google Docs has got those, right? Google Apps has

00:29:42 ◼   ► those features. And there are people who seem to think that that's what technology is, that's

00:29:50 ◼   ► what students are need most. And I think I just I get really depressed by that because

00:29:58 ◼   ► that that seems to me again to be a version of that same argument which is the Microsoft

00:30:03 ◼   ► argument from the old days which is what is computing but office. It's like it's a lot

00:30:09 ◼   ► more than that and I know that Chromebooks do more than this, that you can do a lot more

00:30:14 ◼   ► with Chromebooks than just use Google Apps, but the argument for them seems to be a lot

00:30:21 ◼   ► about that. Like, you gotta use the keyboard for this test and you gotta do this thing,

00:30:25 ◼   ► and you know, I wanna side with the group that's saying, "You know, a crappy laptop

00:30:33 ◼   ► with a keyboard assumed to be the default is maybe going to change and maybe we should

00:30:40 ◼   ► be agents of change and say that you don't always need a crappy laptop with a keyboard,

00:30:45 ◼   ► that maybe having a tablet is better and will make everybody have more stuff that they can

00:30:49 ◼   ► do and cool stuff and it will change the world instead of and being kind of pro the idea

00:30:55 ◼   ► that things are going to change instead of being the agent of the status quo. And agent

00:31:01 ◼   ► that the status quo is a very sensible position to take. And there are a lot of reasons why

00:31:06 ◼   ► the status quo remains. I always have that little red flag that goes up. It's like, I

00:31:11 ◼   ► mean, we had this conversation on download, I think last week, which was, are people really

00:31:15 ◼   ► going to need physical keyboards? And one of my panelists said, people will always need

00:31:19 ◼   ► physical keyboards. And the other panelist who is quite a bit younger said, maybe not.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And I think that's, again, I'm a physical keyboard guy. I would have a hard time adapting,

00:31:29 ◼   ► I did try to put my mind in the thought of what would a really good touchscreen keyboard

00:31:35 ◼   ► device be, because you could make it really good. But I am not somebody who's inclined

00:31:40 ◼   ► to bet on the status quo and say, "Well, yes, there will always be physical keyboards."

00:31:46 ◼   ► Because, I don't know, change is a really powerful thing. And so this is my long way

00:31:51 ◼   ► of saying that I totally get the argument for the sensibility of Chromebooks, but what

00:31:57 ◼   ► What Apple's tapping into is this other thing, which is, can't we strive to do more? Can't

00:32:03 ◼   ► we try to be different? Can't we try to do new and interesting things? And the only way

00:32:07 ◼   ► new and interesting things are going to happen in any area, but in this particular area,

00:32:12 ◼   ► is if you try to do things differently instead of just doing things the same old way. And

00:32:19 ◼   ► again, I will say, this plays into Apple's strengths. That's why Apple's making this

00:32:24 ◼   ► argument. But this is a traditional strength of Apple. This is not a new argument they're

00:32:27 ◼   ► making, that they're just making now because it's all they've got. This has sort of always

00:32:31 ◼   ► been the Apple argument for stuff and it continues to be.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So I've been thinking about this too, right? And I know we've been talking about it. And

00:32:42 ◼   ► a lot of this stuff comes down to price as well. Like there is this idealistic view,

00:32:47 ◼   ► which of course, like I'm sure that there are so many educators that really want the

00:32:51 ◼   ► idealistic view and that these tools will really help them to, you know, to kind of

00:32:57 ◼   ► expand their curriculum a little bit. You've got to learn the same stuff, but there might

00:33:00 ◼   ► be some cool ways you can do it. And I think that's kind of what Apple are hoping that

00:33:04 ◼   ► people will do. But the other part, the other big stumbling block is price. And I know that

00:33:10 ◼   ► we were kind of chatting about some ways that potentially this stuff can be made easier.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean there's two things here. First, just on bare price, I think it's fair to say

00:33:20 ◼   ► that unless you're a technology buyer at a school, you probably don't know the details

00:33:23 ◼   ► of this. My understanding is that although Apple stuff is more expensive than the Google

00:33:28 ◼   ► Chromebook solution, they're not, you can't just take their list price and multiply it.

00:33:33 ◼   ► It's different than that because there are different prices and there are leases. And

00:33:38 ◼   ► so one of Apple's arguments that Apple makes is, for example, that most iPads, and this

00:33:45 ◼   ► is true at my son's school, most iPads are leased, they're not purchased by the school

00:33:49 ◼   ► they're leased for, you know, three, four years, and then they're turned back in,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and there's residual value there. They get credit for the value that remains on those iPads,

00:34:01 ◼   ► and then they get resold or whatever somewhere else, resold, released. And the argument is that

00:34:09 ◼   ► the value retained by Chromebooks after three years out in the field is a lot less. And again,

00:34:16 ◼   ► I don't have corroboration here, but my understanding just from, you know, talking to people theoretically

00:34:23 ◼   ► about this, and certainly this is Apple's argument, and I've talked to people at Apple

00:34:26 ◼   ► who have made this argument, is, you know, basically Chromebooks are, they're $199, $150

00:34:34 ◼   ► laptops. They're kind of cheaply constructed in order for them to be that, and there's

00:34:38 ◼   ► less residual value, or no residual value when those things get turned in because they're

00:34:42 ◼   ► beat up. Now, that's the sales pitch from Apple, is that the leases change the finances

00:34:50 ◼   ► to a certain degree. Apple's still more expensive, but at the mat, it's closer than you might

00:34:55 ◼   ► think. And that you maybe don't buy a pencil for everybody, but the pencils stay in one

00:34:59 ◼   ► class. There are ways to mitigate that. Now they have the crayon as an option that cuts

00:35:04 ◼   ► that price. They are building this case. I got a chance to handle that forthcoming Logitech

00:35:11 ◼   ► iPad case. The rugged. Yeah it's hilarious I mean it makes it feel like a laptop.

00:35:17 ◼   ► It's a detachable keyboard so you can use it like a tablet but it is

00:35:22 ◼   ► putting that sleek iPad in a blocky box but it means that it's rugged and it

00:35:29 ◼   ► turns it into a laptop essentially which is pretty funny. It adds a lot

00:35:35 ◼   ► like I would I'm not somebody who likes a big case on my iPad anyway because I

00:35:39 ◼   ► feel like it adds so much weight to a product that one of the great things about it is it's

00:35:43 ◼   ► so small. Anyway, so there's the lease argument. I think there's the larger argument here,

00:35:48 ◼   ► right, which is something that I've heard people make, but we get so focused on the

00:35:53 ◼   ► technology and it's like this event laid down the argument to us, which was Chromebooks

00:35:57 ◼   ► or iPads. It's like, all right, we can have that conversation. We just had that conversation.

00:36:01 ◼   ► I do think it's fair to say there's another conversation that we should probably not be

00:36:06 ◼   ► the ones to have. But there is a conversation to be had about technology in schools, because

00:36:14 ◼   ► I think you could make a strong argument that – and actually, I remember Casey Liss made

00:36:21 ◼   ► this argument briefly, at least, on ATP last week, which is, you could make the argument

00:36:26 ◼   ► that the money that schools spend on technology purchases should probably go to paying teachers

00:36:34 ◼   ► better, getting more materials in schools. Like, there's an argument to be made that

00:36:38 ◼   ► technology is not a solution, that tech companies are constantly trying to sell into education

00:36:44 ◼   ► and saying that it's the solution and it's going to make your school better and it's

00:36:48 ◼   ► going to make your students smarter and all of these things. And this has been going on

00:36:52 ◼   ► for 30 years, maybe even 40 years now. And it's unclear, my understanding is, it's unclear

00:36:59 ◼   ► if that's really true. There are very specific places where computers in schools make sense.

00:37:03 ◼   ► need to teach people how to be a computer programmer. It makes total sense. Some multimedia

00:37:08 ◼   ► stuff totally makes sense. But a one-to-one program, you know, there is an argument, and

00:37:13 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's right, but there is an argument to say that the money that goes into

00:37:17 ◼   ► buying everybody an iPad would be better spent somewhere else in improving the quality of

00:37:21 ◼   ► the education. And I wanted to at least voice that because I think it's a fair question

00:37:28 ◼   ► And Google and Apple are not going to have that, are not going to talk about that question

00:37:34 ◼   ► because their goal here is not to change the world, it's to sell products.

00:37:41 ◼   ► That's the goal.

00:37:42 ◼   ► That's the goal here.

00:37:43 ◼   ► I am definitely at the camp that I personally don't believe that like every class requires

00:37:56 ◼   ► keyboards and computers.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I think that it's perfectly fine for kids to

00:38:01 ◼   ► handwrite essays.

00:38:02 ◼   ► I don't think that it is required that there has

00:38:06 ◼   ► to be a keyboard in like every single

00:38:09 ◼   ► lesson for all of the stuff to be typed.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I just don't know if that's required.

00:38:12 ◼   ► I mean, I know I didn't learn that way.

00:38:14 ◼   ► And, you know, and like I know that the majority

00:38:16 ◼   ► of people that have ever been to school in human

00:38:18 ◼   ► history have not done that.

00:38:20 ◼   ► So I don't know if it is a requirement

00:38:23 ◼   ► as much as it is a nice to have in some

00:38:26 ◼   ► some areas, required in some areas, and is being heavily pushed by these companies because

00:38:31 ◼   ► they want to make sure that they're the company that people use forever.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Yeah, which I actually, and I think I might have said this last week, but I dispute that

00:38:40 ◼   ► premise too. There is this view of like, well, you know, you get them when they're young

00:38:43 ◼   ► and you own them forever. But that was a premise that came up when people didn't have computers

00:38:48 ◼   ► at home. And they would go to school and they would get that Apple II or a PC or a Mac.

00:38:56 ◼   ► and you'd be like, oh yes, and now they're going to be loyal to us forever.

00:39:00 ◼   ► First off, I know lots of people whose first computer was an Apple computer in

00:39:04 ◼   ► school and then they were a PC person after that, so I'm not sure that actually

00:39:08 ◼   ► worked, but that was part of the narrative anyway. And second, like today

00:39:11 ◼   ► people have technology throughout their homes. I'm not convinced that using a

00:39:15 ◼   ► Chromebook in schools means that you're gonna be tied to Google forever. I just, I

00:39:18 ◼   ► I don't, I question the entire premise of that too. But I think you're right, I mean

00:39:23 ◼   ► you're making an argument that is sort of "we've always done it this way, so why

00:39:27 ◼   ► should it be any different?" which is not my favorite argument to be made, but I get

00:39:30 ◼   ► what you're saying.

00:39:31 ◼   ► No, no, I completely understand why there are things we should advance. I just don't

00:39:37 ◼   ► know if it's needed for everything, right? I don't know if an iPad is needed in every

00:39:41 ◼   ► single class a student takes.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Well, so the argument for the one-to-one program, whatever the technology is, is that at that

00:39:49 ◼   ► point teachers are no longer thinking, "Well, we're going to get the technology for one

00:39:54 ◼   ► class or one week or whatever, and we'll use it to do a unit that uses the technology."

00:39:59 ◼   ► Instead, the idea is once you know that everybody's got one, you can just have it be – it's

00:40:04 ◼   ► just a tool. It's just like a backpack or a pencil. We assume everybody brings a pencil

00:40:09 ◼   ► to class and paper to class, a notebook or whatever, and therefore I can ask you to put

00:40:14 ◼   ► something in your notebook and you can do it because you've got a pencil or a pen

00:40:17 ◼   ► and you've got paper. So the idea with the one-to-one program is similar. It's

00:40:21 ◼   ► the idea that you can just put everything in Google Classroom, for

00:40:24 ◼   ► example, which my sons, even though they use iPads, that's what they do, that

00:40:28 ◼   ► the grade tracking is there, the assignment tracking is there, things get

00:40:31 ◼   ► turned in there. Apps, they know what the apps are that are on the systems so that

00:40:35 ◼   ► they can say, "Let's all open this app and do this thing," and there's advantages to

00:40:40 ◼   ► doing that because it's just assumed that it's there. So you use it when it's

00:40:43 ◼   ► useful rather than trying to construct sort of like a technology now we're

00:40:48 ◼   ► going to get the cart in here and do computer things and instead just say

00:40:51 ◼   ► look the computer is just a tool as part of the education process and and again I

00:40:55 ◼   ► don't have studies or anything to tell you whether that's good or bad but

00:40:59 ◼   ► that's the idea and I like the idea of that by the way as an aside I find it

00:41:05 ◼   ► funny that the very week that Apple had its education event and we started

00:41:08 ◼   ► talking about this stuff the something went wrong in the management system that

00:41:13 ◼   ► my son's middle school uses and a lot of iPads had like their apps and documents

00:41:19 ◼   ► deleted and my son was talking to one of his friends about it like yeah I lost

00:41:23 ◼   ► this thing and I lost this thing and he's oh yeah a lot of people lost that

00:41:26 ◼   ► thing so that's that's the other the other side of this is what happens when

00:41:32 ◼   ► something goes wrong in the school management system and stuff gets deleted

00:41:36 ◼   ► off of kids kids devices the dog is in the school and it's eating everybody's

00:41:41 ◼   ► homework.

00:41:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:41:43 ◼   ► All right, let's leave it there on education for today.

00:41:46 ◼   ► I'm sure more stuff will continue to come up.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I'm not a Luddite.

00:41:50 ◼   ► I just want to make that clear.

00:41:52 ◼   ► It's just my case.

00:41:54 ◼   ► I just get a little bit…

00:41:55 ◼   ► Like I question the motives.

00:41:56 ◼   ► What's wrong with people using pens, Myke?

00:41:58 ◼   ► Why would you be a proponent of pens?

00:42:01 ◼   ► I don't like the idea of future generations growing up without having strong abilities

00:42:05 ◼   ► in reading and writing.

00:42:08 ◼   ► With pens and paper, right?

00:42:10 ◼   ► being on screens, as much as of course I spend my entire time on them now, I think having

00:42:16 ◼   ► the base skills of just being able to express yourself in that way are important. So it

00:42:20 ◼   ► just makes me a little bit skittish.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I don't know, it sounds like you're in the pocket protector of Big Pen.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Oh, nice. Very good. Very, very good. Very good. And I'm just going to leave it there.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Casper, the company

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00:44:34 ◼   ► So there were a heck of a lot of software updates that came out towards the tail end of last week

00:44:40 ◼   ► for basically all of Apple's major platforms. None of them were whiz-bang wonderfulness,

00:44:47 ◼   ► so we're going to kind of I guess round up all of the little tidbits that we found interesting

00:44:52 ◼   ► or important that came from the releases. I think the biggest was 11.3. It has the iPhone battery

00:44:58 ◼   ► settings screen in it, which is hilarious to me because that feels like a really long

00:45:04 ◼   ► time ago that we were talking about that now.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And here it is.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Like that was back before Christmas, right?

00:45:10 ◼   ► That was back before the holidays.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And here we are.

00:45:14 ◼   ► It's out in 11.3 now, like some four months later, basically.

00:45:19 ◼   ► The screen is, I find it honestly, a little bit incomprehensible.

00:45:25 ◼   ► I don't fully understand, like it feels like things should be buttons but they're not buttons,

00:45:30 ◼   ► it's a strange little screen. It is a baker of course.

00:45:32 ◼   ► You can see why Apple didn't want to show this to people.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Yes. You know, obviously my results are as I would expect, my phone is at 100% battery

00:45:42 ◼   ► health which I would expect because it's still new, right? It was interesting, Stephen Hackett

00:45:49 ◼   ► saw that his wife's iPhone SE was at 90% battery which he bought when it debuted in 2016. So

00:45:55 ◼   ► So that was quite surprising to see that the battery still counted to be that good.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I haven't seen anybody reporting lower percentage batteries anywhere, but it's there now.

00:46:05 ◼   ► The screen is there.

00:46:06 ◼   ► It's something you can keep checking in on if you want to.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I don't expect to ever look at that screen like ever again, I guess, because I now know

00:46:15 ◼   ► that even if I kept the phone for a couple of years, it would probably be in pretty good

00:46:18 ◼   ► condition.

00:46:19 ◼   ► But it's there if you want it.

00:46:21 ◼   ► I genuinely think, honestly, it's probably just going to confuse people more than anything

00:46:24 ◼   ► else, but Apple didn't need to add it because, you know, to reiterate all the conversations

00:46:28 ◼   ► from December of 2017, they badly communicated it to people.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And I think it's one of those things where they would rather not have a conversation

00:46:36 ◼   ► and they would rather have not people obsess over it, but some people are going to obsess

00:46:39 ◼   ► over it. Some people are going to wonder, they're going to have a friend who says, "Well,

00:46:43 ◼   ► I don't know, did you check the battery? That battery, Apple's got problems with batteries,"

00:46:46 ◼   ► or whatever, and they're like, "Oh, is there a battery setting? I'll go check it. Oh, it's

00:46:49 ◼   ► I'm fine. I'll it's that's not it. I'll move along or whatever

00:46:53 ◼   ► this is I

00:46:56 ◼   ► I will say I talked to somebody who works in Apple retail who told me that

00:47:00 ◼   ► that the battery thing has been a huge drain on Apple retail because

00:47:05 ◼   ► You know everybody said bring in your phones and and then they get really angry when they're there

00:47:11 ◼   ► You know

00:47:11 ◼   ► They've got people doing battery swaps all the time

00:47:14 ◼   ► like at high volume, as high volume as they possibly can,

00:47:17 ◼   ► and still people come in and they wait in line at the,

00:47:19 ◼   ► they drive to an Apple store,

00:47:20 ◼   ► which can be far for some people,

00:47:22 ◼   ► and they wait in line and then they're told,

00:47:25 ◼   ► no, you actually need to come back in two weeks

00:47:29 ◼   ► and do this again,

00:47:30 ◼   ► 'cause we can't take care of this right now.

00:47:31 ◼   ► And that makes them angry.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And if you look at Yelp reviews for Apple stories,

00:47:34 ◼   ► you'll see those angry people in the Yelp reviews.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And it's one of those things that I think Apple

00:47:39 ◼   ► made the right decision on a large scale

00:47:41 ◼   ► in terms of making that controversy go away,

00:47:45 ◼   ► and it totally did.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Like by saying, "No, no, we'll fix it, it's fine.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Just bring it in."

00:47:52 ◼   ► They like, the media story ended.

00:47:54 ◼   ► But my understanding is there is this like follow-on

00:47:57 ◼   ► corrosive effect to the story,

00:47:58 ◼   ► which is that at retail now,

00:48:02 ◼   ► you're getting pileups of people with batteries.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And that is a problem that makes people angry at Apple

00:48:11 ◼   ► on a personal close basis

00:48:14 ◼   ► instead of the kind of like global media firestorm,

00:48:16 ◼   ► but it's still an issue for them.

00:48:18 ◼   ► The advantage of something like this, this information is,

00:48:21 ◼   ► it does potentially let a user,

00:48:23 ◼   ► a friend of the person who has the phone

00:48:25 ◼   ► or somebody at the Apple store,

00:48:26 ◼   ► be able to point at it and say,

00:48:28 ◼   ► "No, you're actually fine,"

00:48:30 ◼   ► and have them leave or not come in.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And that is helpful,

00:48:35 ◼   ► even though it's more complexity and it's weird

00:48:38 ◼   ► and Apple would rather not communicate this stuff.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I like that it's there just because it's another thing

00:48:44 ◼   ► that people could cite.

00:48:46 ◼   ► But I definitely get the sense that Apple retail

00:48:48 ◼   ► is having a really hard time,

00:48:50 ◼   ► keeping in mind too that after the holidays,

00:48:52 ◼   ► which is when this all went on,

00:48:54 ◼   ► after the holidays, Apple retail traditionally cuts back

00:48:57 ◼   ► on staff hours because it's out of the holiday period.

00:49:01 ◼   ► So now they're down staff and dealing with a massive influx

00:49:05 ◼   ► of people who want their batteries checked or replaced.

00:49:08 ◼   ► So it's, yeah, yeah.

00:49:10 ◼   ► So anyway, I think it's tough times

00:49:12 ◼   ► in Apple retail land right now.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So if this provides a little more clarity or cushion

00:49:18 ◼   ► or something for people, then that's good.

00:49:21 ◼   ► That's a good start.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - 11.3 also included ARKit 1.5,

00:49:26 ◼   ► which has a bunch of advantages

00:49:28 ◼   ► like being able to detect vertical surfaces.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Previously, it was on the horizontal surfaces.

00:49:32 ◼   ► So it can detect like tables and floors, but not walls.

00:49:35 ◼   ► So that's great to have that.

00:49:36 ◼   ► ARKit can now map irregularly shaped objects.

00:49:40 ◼   ► So if you've got like a, I don't know, a pointy wall or something, who knows?

00:49:43 ◼   ► 50% greater resolution and the ability to use autofocus.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So apparently from reading around and I read this on Mac stories,

00:49:51 ◼   ► these were the things that developers were asking for.

00:49:55 ◼   ► And Apple have added them really quickly.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Like the amount of stuff that they've actually added in,

00:50:01 ◼   ► the advancements that they've taken for ARKit 1.5,

00:50:05 ◼   ► these were the things that people were expecting Apple to debut at WWDC

00:50:08 ◼   ► this year.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Right. And ship in the fall at iOS 12.

00:50:11 ◼   ► But they've just put it out now. So apparently this should make ARKit apps a lot,

00:50:16 ◼   ► lot better. Um,

00:50:17 ◼   ► I'm excited about the 50% greater resolution and autofocus.

00:50:21 ◼   ► So I'm expecting this is going to help the images look better and it work in the

00:50:25 ◼   ► dark, like it work in not great lighting better. So I'm,

00:50:28 ◼   ► I'm pretty excited about that.

00:50:29 ◼   ► So I'm going to keep my eye on this like to kind of,

00:50:32 ◼   ► to see apps that I use and have installed

00:50:34 ◼   ► to see if they're gonna like mention

00:50:36 ◼   ► that they got 1.5 ARKit added and see what that does.

00:50:40 ◼   ► - I think it's also an interesting thing for,

00:50:43 ◼   ► we talk a lot about Apple's cycle with software

00:50:46 ◼   ► and things that they say they may be,

00:50:48 ◼   ► or reports are they may be slowing down on.

00:50:51 ◼   ► When we look at what's in this 11.3, ARKit is a good example.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Like maybe Apple also has decided

00:50:58 ◼   ► they're not going to hold some major stuff until the next fall release if they don't have to.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And I actually am really encouraged by that. I'm very excited by the fact that ARKit 1.5

00:51:11 ◼   ► shipped now because, yeah, I know it's a follow-on to that first ARKit release and that there were

00:51:18 ◼   ► probably lots of things that they didn't have ready or that they really wanted to knock down

00:51:23 ◼   ► quickly and get it out there so that they could press their lead on it. That's all true,

00:51:26 ◼   ► But still, the fact that it's out now and not in six months is a big deal.

00:51:33 ◼   ► That's a big deal.

00:51:34 ◼   ► There are now music videos in the music app, and Apple debuted a lot of music videos, I

00:51:40 ◼   ► think some kind of exclusive music videos too.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Really this feels like very basic video support.

00:51:47 ◼   ► It's kind of strange.

00:51:48 ◼   ► You can't airplay the videos.

00:51:49 ◼   ► The video player is kind of weird.

00:51:51 ◼   ► It doesn't do full screen in the way you'd expect.

00:51:53 ◼   ► It's very strange.

00:51:55 ◼   ► basically is in the same way that all of the TV shows inside of

00:51:59 ◼   ► Apple music feel strange so do the music videos, but they have them there

00:52:03 ◼   ► They have playlists and you can cue playlists up. You can take all the advantage of the features in Apple music

00:52:07 ◼   ► but with music videos now, too

00:52:09 ◼   ► New animoji there is a lion a dragon a bear and a skull

00:52:13 ◼   ► Great additions. They're fun. I

00:52:16 ◼   ► Demoed an emoji to my five-year-old nephew yesterday and he was losing his mind. So that was really fun to watch

00:52:25 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean an emoji for me like I use it I use them for stickers every now and then I don't record videos

00:52:31 ◼   ► I'm still just waiting for like an actual emoji face then I would use it all the time

00:52:36 ◼   ► Just let me make my own emoji faces

00:52:38 ◼   ► Like let me let my the shocked emoji face instead of there being like a lion

00:52:43 ◼   ► I mean, I'm still hoping that though at that some point

00:52:45 ◼   ► And then the last I think the last big thing in in in 11-3 is the health records thing

00:52:52 ◼   ► So your personal health records can be stored in the health app if you're a patient of a partnering facility

00:52:58 ◼   ► Which seems like a really cool thing

00:53:00 ◼   ► But it's one of those things that I know I'm never gonna get because they're probably never gonna expand

00:53:04 ◼   ► Outside of the US and even if they do you have to be like a very specific hospital

00:53:09 ◼   ► Right, like of the partner hospitals are gonna do it blah blah blah blah, but it's cool if you've got it available to you. I

00:53:15 ◼   ► Think more interesting for me Jason than what's included in 11.3 is what isn't

00:53:21 ◼   ► So, things that were in the beta process that have been removed.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Airplay 2 and iMessages in the cloud.

00:53:30 ◼   ► So, these were both things that were in the beta processes, things that were both announced

00:53:35 ◼   ► at WWDC 2017 and they're still not shipping.

00:53:41 ◼   ► So let's assume now that these won't come in 11.3.1, right?

00:53:49 ◼   ► would maybe come in 11.4 which we know will exist because they spoke about it last week

00:53:54 ◼   ► and this is slated for a June release which is going to bring a lot of the support for

00:53:58 ◼   ► the education some of the education stuff so we know that 11.4 is coming so let's assume

00:54:04 ◼   ► that Airplay 2 messages in the cloud are in 11.4 if they are this is a year after the

00:54:09 ◼   ► features were announced and four months after the HomePod shipped and the HomePod was the

00:54:15 ◼   ► poster child for AirPlay 2. But this is even assuming that they will ship it at 11.4. It

00:54:20 ◼   ► is possible that these might be pushed to 12. That is wild.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I think if they can't get them in 11.4, that's what will happen next, right? I think it would

00:54:30 ◼   ► be amazing if they got them in an 11.4 release. And like on stage while they're announcing

00:54:35 ◼   ► iOS 12 mentioned that AirPlay 2 and messages in the cloud is also in an iOS 11 update that's

00:54:42 ◼   ► available, like they'll get applause for that or something, but it would have been on the

00:54:45 ◼   ► same stage where they announced those features a year before. It's pretty wild. But this

00:54:51 ◼   ► is our conversation about this. Like, they pulled stuff forward and then they also pushed

00:54:54 ◼   ► stuff back. And so you get ARKit 1.5, but you also get no AirPlay 2. And, you know,

00:55:03 ◼   ► we've talked about it before. Apple has stuff that's not ready, and they've decided not

00:55:09 ◼   ► to ship it, and on one level that's really good, especially with messages in the cloud

00:55:12 ◼   ► that you kind of don't want to mess that up. But it is interesting that 10 months later

00:55:17 ◼   ► from when they announced it, it's still not shipping. It's still not ready. Even though

00:55:21 ◼   ► it was in the betas, they put it in the betas, they wanted to test it out, that was great.

00:55:24 ◼   ► It wasn't good enough to ship it, so they pulled it back out, and presumably there'll

00:55:28 ◼   ► be another iOS beta shortly that will probably have it back in.

00:55:32 ◼   ► messages in the cloud I'm kind of like okay right like that I assume is

00:55:41 ◼   ► like I assume both of these things are really difficult to do anyway but like

00:55:44 ◼   ► I'm like okay well I'll wait until that comes because whatever right like it

00:55:48 ◼   ► will come when it comes but AirPlay 2 is like a temp hole feature of a product

00:55:52 ◼   ► that now is in my living room like that one seems way weirder to me like that

00:55:58 ◼   ► the home pod should have AirPlay 2 in it so like all of my airplane will be

00:56:02 ◼   ► better on this thing so I'm not waiting for four seconds every time I press the

00:56:05 ◼   ► play button when sending an overcast like podcast to it right an overcast

00:56:10 ◼   ► stream like I want at play - I bought a product that should have it in there

00:56:14 ◼   ► right you told me you told me when you originally told me about this product

00:56:19 ◼   ► that it would include it and then I kind of gave you benefit of the doubt that it

00:56:22 ◼   ► didn't and this is this is a really weird one to me like what is stopping

00:56:27 ◼   ► them I mean there obviously must be something really tough with it are they

00:56:31 ◼   ► can do it? Like is this something they can do? Like is it just...

00:56:34 ◼   ► I think it's something they can do but they obviously had trouble with it and are still

00:56:39 ◼   ► working on it. It is the mystery of the HomePod, the riddle of the HomePod continues, right?

00:56:45 ◼   ► Like why that product exists the way it does and when it existed and when they announced

00:56:49 ◼   ► it and when they shipped it and the fact that features are missing even now from it. It's

00:56:53 ◼   ► fascinating. Fascinating.

00:56:57 ◼   ► WatchOS 4.3 was released, it restored the ability to control your iPhone's music playback.

00:57:03 ◼   ► If you read that and you're like, hang on a second, I don't understand, what this did

00:57:07 ◼   ► was it reverted a decision from 4 point whatever, 2 I guess, where now you can browse your whole

00:57:15 ◼   ► library again, not just what was in the watch music app.

00:57:20 ◼   ► That's what it changed.

00:57:21 ◼   ► So you can now browse your whole library and choose from anything and control the music

00:57:25 ◼   ► playing on your phone not just on your watch and it also added some home pod music controls

00:57:30 ◼   ► so you can now like go in with the audio picker thing and you can control the volume levels

00:57:36 ◼   ► of your home pod with the digital crown and stuff like that.

00:57:40 ◼   ► It added activity to the Siri watch face so now on the Siri watch face you have like a

00:57:44 ◼   ► permanent thing there when there's no other cards that shows your rings and it shows the

00:57:49 ◼   ► calories you've burned in the day, the amount of minutes of exercise and how many stand

00:57:54 ◼   ► hours. Previously on the watch when it had nothing else to display it just said "have

00:57:59 ◼   ► a great afternoon" and so that was kind of pointless. I prefer to have this piece of

00:58:04 ◼   ► information there even though it's guilting me constantly into the fact that I haven't

00:58:07 ◼   ► closed my rings. It added also portrait support for nightstand mode. So nightstand mode is

00:58:13 ◼   ► when you if you have your Apple watch charging on the side you get the big clock at night

00:58:20 ◼   ► and you can kind of like bump your nightstand and it lights the watch up. This is now available

00:58:25 ◼   ► in portrait mode which is probably for air power. I did notice Jason when you put the

00:58:32 ◼   ► Apple watch on to charge there's a new charge animation. So all of this stuff is for air

00:58:36 ◼   ► power if that ever arrives. That product, who knows where it is, it's out there somewhere.

00:58:43 ◼   ► So a lot of this stuff is probably added for that when it will come. The home pod got an

00:58:47 ◼   ► update 2.3 gigabytes just bug fixes no idea this is one of those things I've seen people saying like

00:58:52 ◼   ► oh I think there's less bass in the home pod I can't like believe any of that stuff because

00:58:58 ◼   ► it's all subjective right they haven't said that it's reduced the base so I don't know how you

00:59:04 ◼   ► how you test that yeah I saw several people say that they thought that the um that some songs

00:59:10 ◼   ► sounded different that they were fixing bugs in what they were doing with their processing of

00:59:16 ◼   ► songs, but it's very hard to tell because, you know, how do you do? You get two home

00:59:22 ◼   ► pods and you try very hard for one not to be updated, but there's a small window

00:59:28 ◼   ► and then it downloads a software update and you can't take it off the internet

00:59:33 ◼   ► because it needs to use the internet in order to play the music and it's a

00:59:36 ◼   ► challenge is what I'm saying. It's a challenge to to test that out and then

00:59:39 ◼   ► you've got a library of songs and how do you do that? It's hard to say, but I

00:59:43 ◼   ► have heard people report that they feel like there were songs that were

00:59:45 ◼   ► problematic that the processing on the HomePod was weird and that it doesn't sound weird

00:59:52 ◼   ► now. So it may be that they are fixing bugs in their audio processing too.

00:59:56 ◼   ► But it's so hard to really kind of like categorically say one way or another for that, right?

01:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah, especially if Apple doesn't detail it in some way.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And Mac OS 10.13.4, so this is High Sierra point four?

01:00:15 ◼   ► Is that right?

01:00:16 ◼   ► Sure.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:18 ◼   ► It added external GPU support, which is something we knew about.

01:00:21 ◼   ► There are a small range, but a range of products that are available that are supported by the

01:00:26 ◼   ► Mac, which is more than just the one that they had originally allowed for people to

01:00:32 ◼   ► buy during the testing period.

01:00:34 ◼   ► So there are a range of external GPU products that you can buy and they are supported now

01:00:39 ◼   ► officially by Mac OS.

01:00:43 ◼   ► It cannot be used in boot camp with Windows, right?

01:00:47 ◼   ► Which I thought was funny.

01:00:49 ◼   ► You can't do that so if you think you're going to be able to use your iMac for super powerful

01:00:52 ◼   ► gaming now on Windows, that is not going to happen for you.

01:00:58 ◼   ► There was something that I saw that wasn't an addition but something has broken which

01:01:03 ◼   ► I find really unfortunate and interesting and it's just yet another example of why development

01:01:11 ◼   ► can be tricky. Lots of Mac desktop extension software, so a few different programs, one

01:01:20 ◼   ► including Duet Display, have been rendered inoperable by this version of Mac OS due to

01:01:26 ◼   ► what the developers of Duet Display are calling critical bugs. They have alerted these critical

01:01:31 ◼   ► bugs to Apple for Apple to fix them. This seems like a difficult and risky situation

01:01:37 ◼   ► to hope that that's going to occur for you. Yeah, I don't know. So basically something's

01:01:45 ◼   ► changed in Mac OS, which is basically rendering apps like Air Display, iDisplay, Duet Display,

01:01:52 ◼   ► they don't work. They just don't work. So these are the applications where you can have

01:01:56 ◼   ► an iOS device and a Mac and you can basically use your iOS device like it's a secondary

01:02:01 ◼   ► screen for your Mac and something in this version of Mac OS has broken those

01:02:06 ◼   ► applications so whatever API they were taking advantage of or whatever this is

01:02:12 ◼   ► like just another example of why some what was there like some things on on

01:02:18 ◼   ► the Mac that you can do because the Mac is open right like you can do this the

01:02:25 ◼   ► weird and wonderful stuff is open to be broken and then what do you do?

01:02:30 ◼   ► Yeah well I think this is a good example of why if you rely on stuff that is not

01:02:38 ◼   ► stock Apple that you don't rush to update to 10.13.4 because you never

01:02:46 ◼   ► know something like this might happen and it does happen from time to time so

01:02:49 ◼   ► if you've got critical stuff that is that is not stock you know waiting to

01:02:54 ◼   ► update until you see an all-clear from people who are using or testing the stuff you use

01:03:00 ◼   ► is always a prudent thing. This is a weird one. I'd like to think that this is probably

01:03:05 ◼   ► a bug that maybe even is related to the eGPU stuff, that there's something different about

01:03:10 ◼   ► display stuff in 1013.4 and they introduced a bug that it's not Apple. I think Apple has

01:03:15 ◼   ► no motivation to crush these apps. I think probably it was just they didn't test against

01:03:19 ◼   ► these apps and they broke something and with any luck it'll get fixed. The bad

01:03:24 ◼   ► news is if that you're in 10.13.4 already and you rely on them you're gonna

01:03:28 ◼   ► have to find a way to roll back and even then you're gonna have to wait it out

01:03:31 ◼   ► until a 10.13.5 beta or until 10.13.5 drops. I had a funny thing I'm on 10.13.4

01:03:40 ◼   ► now and it's very exciting because I was on a beta of 10.13... it might not have

01:03:48 ◼   ► even been three, it might've been two.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I was on one of those betas and it prevented,

01:03:54 ◼   ► I was not able to update to another version after that

01:04:01 ◼   ► on my iMac Pro, something weird, I think with the iMac Pro,

01:04:06 ◼   ► 'cause it's got the weird, you know,

01:04:09 ◼   ► it's got the bridge OS and then,

01:04:10 ◼   ► and it's got, it's an unusual new system for Apple

01:04:16 ◼   ► for how the machine boots and runs.

01:04:20 ◼   ► And I was in a boot loop.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Every time a new version would download,

01:04:24 ◼   ► it'd be like, I'm gonna install this now,

01:04:26 ◼   ► getting ready to install.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And then it would restart or maybe shut down,

01:04:30 ◼   ► but then it would restart or I would turn it on

01:04:32 ◼   ► and it would end up booting into an installer window

01:04:34 ◼   ► and saying, I couldn't install it.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Would you like to save an error log?

01:04:38 ◼   ► And then you like try, let's try that again.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Nope, I still can't do it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And then if you set your disc as the startup disc,

01:04:46 ◼   ► it would just boot back into the same beta

01:04:49 ◼   ► that I was in before.

01:04:50 ◼   ► So I was running a Mac OS beta for a couple months,

01:04:53 ◼   ► at least.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Whoops.

01:04:57 ◼   ► - And amazingly, 10.13.4 actually installed.

01:05:02 ◼   ► - That's good news.

01:05:03 ◼   ► - I left the installer loop behind,

01:05:06 ◼   ► which is, and it's one of those things where it was a beta.

01:05:09 ◼   ► So like on one level, I'm like, well, it's a beta.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I did this to myself.

01:05:12 ◼   ► On another level, I'm thinking to myself,

01:05:14 ◼   ► "How do I get out of this beta?"

01:05:15 ◼   ► And I tried downloading a full installer

01:05:19 ◼   ► of the most recent version of High Sierra

01:05:21 ◼   ► and putting them in external drive and installing from that

01:05:24 ◼   ► and turning off all of the security settings on the iMac

01:05:26 ◼   ► so that you can actually boot from an external drive

01:05:29 ◼   ► and install.

01:05:29 ◼   ► And it was like,

01:05:30 ◼   ► "Oh, I need to download some components to add to this."

01:05:33 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh, that's pretty cool

01:05:34 ◼   ► that the macOS installer knows that I'm on the iMac Pro

01:05:38 ◼   ► and it needs a couple other pieces."

01:05:39 ◼   ► So it downloads it and then it restarts.

01:05:41 ◼   ► is now I'm installing it and guess what?

01:05:43 ◼   ► Then it would reboot and say,

01:05:44 ◼   ► oh, I had an installation error and I couldn't install.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Sorry, would you like to save a log?

01:05:48 ◼   ► And yeah, so that led to lots of concern,

01:05:54 ◼   ► but the good news is I am now off of the betas

01:05:58 ◼   ► and on 10.13.4 and I guess I just won't use duet display,

01:06:02 ◼   ► but at least I'm not on a beta now.

01:06:05 ◼   ► - No, I did think to myself,

01:06:08 ◼   ► whilst Apple may not have decided to do this,

01:06:11 ◼   ► like, you know, it's easy to assume that just something changed and broke it. I wonder if

01:06:16 ◼   ► like iOS 12 and like, hey, you can now use your iPad as the secondary display. And like

01:06:21 ◼   ► the reason it broke it was because they've been building their own system. Who knows?

01:06:26 ◼   ► Like, it'd be kind of funny to me in a very sad, sad way because that's how shell-looking

01:06:31 ◼   ► goes.

01:06:32 ◼   ► There's a Kickstarter project that has already closed that's out there that and I forget

01:06:36 ◼   ► the name of it now.

01:06:37 ◼   ► It's by the Astropad people.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's it.

01:06:40 ◼   ► And they have a hardware thing that you pop in

01:06:43 ◼   ► to many display port or USB-C,

01:06:45 ◼   ► and then it transmits that to the Mac.

01:06:49 ◼   ► And that has struck me as I've read about it

01:06:52 ◼   ► as a safer solution, 'cause they're not hacking,

01:06:55 ◼   ► they're not kind of hacking the graphics card,

01:06:57 ◼   ► which is what these other ones are doing.

01:06:59 ◼   ► - It's tricking the system into thinking

01:07:03 ◼   ► that another display is attached.

01:07:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, basically the little thing you attach

01:07:08 ◼   ► is essentially an external display, right?

01:07:11 ◼   ► It's a hardware external display and it's saying,

01:07:13 ◼   ► here I am, and that external display is then transmitted,

01:07:16 ◼   ► the data is transmitted to the iPad.

01:07:19 ◼   ► And that, I wonder if that works still.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I bet you it does, but I don't know for sure.

01:07:25 ◼   ► Because that's still in beta.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Haven't shipped it yet.

01:07:27 ◼   ► - As is usual when we talk about these things on the show,

01:07:30 ◼   ► iOS 11.4 has been seeded to developers.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Don't know what's in it yet because--

01:07:35 ◼   ► - As we talked.

01:07:36 ◼   ► - And not enough people have been able to dig into it

01:07:38 ◼   ► at this point to talk about what's in there, but I mean, we are naturally assuming class

01:07:43 ◼   ► kit and school work will be in there because that's what we knew was going to be in it.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Who knows if Airplay 2 and Messages in the Cloud are in there. You will probably know

01:07:52 ◼   ► by the time you're hearing this. If you just go to the links in the show notes, it will

01:07:56 ◼   ► say. Hello future people.

01:07:59 ◼   ► All right, let's do some #AskUpgrade. But today's AskUpgrade is brought to you by PCALC, the scientific

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01:08:10 ◼   ► or anybody looking for a great calculator. It's available for the iPhone, iPad, Mac,

01:08:15 ◼   ► Apple Watch and even the Apple TV. One powerful feature of the iOS version of PCALC is the

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01:08:55 ◼   ► there are more than 40 alternative icons that you can choose from for Peacalc. It's wonderful.

01:09:01 ◼   ► PCalk works seamlessly with iPad multitasking, so you can use it in split screen alongside

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01:09:20 ◼   ► which I obviously don't need to explain any further because me and Jason know exactly

01:09:24 ◼   ► what this means, as we're both certified math experts, right Jason?

01:09:27 ◼   ► You know all about reverse polish notation.

01:09:29 ◼   ► That's right, what you do, Myke, is you take a Polish sausage and then you eat it the other

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01:09:35 ◼   ► That's how it works.

01:09:36 ◼   ► If you're still in the mood for yet another Easter egg, Peacock has the most elaborate

01:09:40 ◼   ► about screen, maybe since Microsoft hid an entire flight simulator inside of Excel.

01:09:46 ◼   ► The Peacock about screen is one of my very favorite things on all of iOS.

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01:09:55 ◼   ► You can search in the App Store for Peacalc or if you go to peacalc.com/upgrade for more

01:10:06 ◼   ► details about Peacalc.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Our thanks to Peacalc for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:10:11 ◼   ► We're outside of the ad now so I would just say Peacalc is one of my very favourite apps

01:10:15 ◼   ► on iOS.

01:10:16 ◼   ► If you have yet to try it, you should try it.

01:10:20 ◼   ► It's brilliant.

01:10:22 ◼   ► I love it.

01:10:24 ◼   ► #AskUpgrade. First we have a question from Jeff. Jeff wants to know, "Do you think

01:10:29 ◼   ► that something like the Logitech Crayon could come to an iPhone model in the future?"

01:10:34 ◼   ► So I have a couple of thoughts about this. One, I am just waiting for the Logitech Crayon

01:10:38 ◼   ► to go on sale generally now because people seem so excited about it. I think at some

01:10:43 ◼   ► point there's going to be a product like this which comes out to the masses. We'll

01:10:46 ◼   ► have to wait and see. And I mean, I was on the books of predicting that the iPhone 10

01:10:52 ◼   ► would have Apple Pencil support.

01:10:55 ◼   ► I still think it will happen in the future.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Do you?

01:10:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's inevitable that it will happen.

01:11:01 ◼   ► The question is, what form will it take?

01:11:06 ◼   ► And is Apple, is the crayon a hint

01:11:09 ◼   ► that Apple Pencil may change,

01:11:12 ◼   ► and how Apple's approach to writing may change?

01:11:15 ◼   ► And I don't know, 'cause a crayon uses a different system.

01:11:18 ◼   ► It's not Bluetooth, it's a single radio frequency.

01:11:21 ◼   ► It doesn't pair, instead it's proximity based.

01:11:23 ◼   ► So you can use that crayon on an iPad

01:11:25 ◼   ► and then literally just move it over to another iPad

01:11:27 ◼   ► and write on it and it totally works,

01:11:29 ◼   ► which the Apple Pencil doesn't work like that.

01:11:31 ◼   ► - I would love that because I currently have

01:11:33 ◼   ► two Apple Pencils, I would like to just have

01:11:35 ◼   ► one Apple Pencil.

01:11:36 ◼   ► - Right, and so it could be that people are like,

01:11:38 ◼   ► oh, well, you know, why does it only work with this one iPad

01:11:41 ◼   ► and not all the other iPad Pros?

01:11:43 ◼   ► And the answer is because they're using this new technology

01:11:45 ◼   ► and it wouldn't shock me if they might be doing that

01:11:50 ◼   ► for other devices too down the road.

01:11:52 ◼   ► And if they do that, yeah, maybe that's a thing

01:11:54 ◼   ► that they could put in an iPhone.

01:11:56 ◼   ► It wouldn't surprise me.

01:11:57 ◼   ► And they're gonna have, if this iPhone 10 Plus is real,

01:12:01 ◼   ► where it's even larger than the iPhone 10,

01:12:04 ◼   ► that would be potentially a natural

01:12:06 ◼   ► for some sort of optional stylus input.

01:12:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, honestly, I would be surprised.

01:12:14 ◼   ► I would be really surprised if Apple has this

01:12:17 ◼   ► like 700 inch iPhone 10 plus without without pencil because like the rumors

01:12:23 ◼   ► are like you know getting up there to seven inches at 6.7 or something like

01:12:27 ◼   ► that if I remember off the top of my head it's basically an iPad mini like

01:12:31 ◼   ► you're getting real close to the iPad mini it kind of I think it'd be kind of

01:12:36 ◼   ► nice worth the wait huh Jason asks this is not used as another Jason not me

01:12:41 ◼   ► probably why do people want the bezels on the iPad to go away the bezels serve

01:12:46 ◼   ► a better purpose on the iPad than on the iPhone, surely.

01:12:49 ◼   ► Jason, when we talk about the bezels going away on an iPad, what do you mean?

01:12:53 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I think the top and the bottom, the forehead and the feet, I don't know where

01:13:00 ◼   ► the button is, like, I get that you want to hold your iPad by the corners, I get that,

01:13:05 ◼   ► but they've already reduced the bezel on the sides, and it doesn't bother me, like, it

01:13:10 ◼   ► hasn't affected it at all.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And the idea there is you can get more screen

01:13:14 ◼   ► in a smaller device,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and that either makes the iPad smaller

01:13:19 ◼   ► or it makes the screen bigger,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and those are both good things.

01:13:21 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't expect that the iPad

01:13:25 ◼   ► needs to be iPhone 10-like in its lack of bezel,

01:13:30 ◼   ► but there's a lot of bezel space left

01:13:33 ◼   ► to be slimmed down, I think, in the iPad.

01:13:35 ◼   ► - I wanna see the thickness that's on the long sides

01:13:39 ◼   ► the whole way around.

01:13:40 ◼   ► like really small, right?

01:13:43 ◼   ► You know, I wonder if it's like proportionally

01:13:47 ◼   ► like the iPhone, I don't know,

01:13:48 ◼   ► like I'd have to do some mathematics,

01:13:50 ◼   ► probably using Peacap to work out that,

01:13:52 ◼   ► but when I hold my iPad in portrait mode,

01:13:56 ◼   ► I'm not accidentally touching things,

01:13:59 ◼   ► like, you know, the palm rejection is very good still,

01:14:02 ◼   ► right, I don't think anyone is expecting

01:14:04 ◼   ► or really asking for just this front of the iPad

01:14:08 ◼   ► to be only a screen, right?

01:14:09 ◼   ► but what we refer to as bezel-less.

01:14:12 ◼   ► There is a continuum of no bezels,

01:14:18 ◼   ► which goes from zero to the iPad,

01:14:21 ◼   ► and it's all referred to as there not being any bezels,

01:14:25 ◼   ► but what everybody really means is just very thin, right?

01:14:28 ◼   ► And that's all I want, very thin,

01:14:29 ◼   ► is what I'm looking for.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Virginia asks, "Was there a day

01:14:33 ◼   ► "when Apple's education discounts were more aggressive?

01:14:37 ◼   ► "Urban legend has it that Apple IIs

01:14:39 ◼   ► were basically given away. Do we know if this is the case, Jason?

01:14:42 ◼   ► Well, Apple's education discounts were much more aggressive back in the day.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I would say that although we think of Apple's products as expensive today

01:14:51 ◼   ► in a lot of places, you know, you gotta keep in mind back in the earlier days of

01:14:55 ◼   ► computing, in the early days of the Mac,

01:14:57 ◼   ► you know, a lot of these Apple computers were multi-thousands of dollars at a

01:15:01 ◼   ► time when

01:15:02 ◼   ► that would be like even more cost today.

01:15:05 ◼   ► - Let me be like 10 grand today or something, right?

01:15:07 ◼   ► For like Apple II.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - Historically, the prices have come down

01:15:12 ◼   ► in terms of real dollars from back in the day.

01:15:15 ◼   ► But that meant that also, yes,

01:15:17 ◼   ► that with larger prices came larger discounts.

01:15:20 ◼   ► So that is true.

01:15:21 ◼   ► It used to be that if you knew somebody who was in college

01:15:25 ◼   ► and you could get them to buy you a Mac

01:15:27 ◼   ► at their college sales outlet,

01:15:31 ◼   ► which all colleges had computer sales outlets.

01:15:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure if they still do.

01:15:34 ◼   ► I think UC Berkeley shut theirs down or moved it into the bookstore and all that.

01:15:38 ◼   ► But there used to be like the Scholars Workstation at UC Berkeley, and that's where I bought

01:15:42 ◼   ► my PowerBook 160.

01:15:44 ◼   ► And you got a good deal.

01:15:45 ◼   ► You got a really good deal.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Like that was the place to get a computer, an Apple computer if you could, if you knew

01:15:52 ◼   ► somebody who was eligible and you had to prove your eligibility and show your student ID

01:15:55 ◼   ► and all to be an active student.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And you were limited to like buy one computer a year or something so that it wasn't abused.

01:16:00 ◼   ► But it was a little bit like knowing somebody who works at Apple and having them buy a computer

01:16:04 ◼   ► for you, you get a big discount that way too. So, uh, there's still education discounts

01:16:09 ◼   ► like individual student education discounts today, you can get like 10 or 15% off some

01:16:13 ◼   ► stuff. Yeah, some stuff, it's still there, it's just not like it was. It's just not like

01:16:18 ◼   ► it was. Um, and as for the urban legend, um, I think the source of this is that, um, Apple

01:16:25 ◼   ► gave an Apple II to every public school, I believe, in California at one point. Wow.

01:16:32 ◼   ► That was their initiative.

01:16:35 ◼   ► And that is the source of that legend, and I think it's the source of the narrative about

01:16:39 ◼   ► how you catch them early and they're your user for life.

01:16:43 ◼   ► But that's the story that Apple gave an Apple II to every school in California.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Elijah asks, "Do you think that the Apple Watch will ever be sold as a separate, complete

01:16:57 ◼   ► computer without the need for an iPhone?"

01:17:02 ◼   ► I feel like that's the eventual goal, right?

01:17:06 ◼   ► Like that's the logical end game of the product.

01:17:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's most likely that what it'll be

01:17:11 ◼   ► is like an airport where, you know, it'll be independent,

01:17:15 ◼   ► but you'll need an app to set it up.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - Okay, I wonder what airport you were referring to.

01:17:19 ◼   ► It's like if things come in-- - San Francisco International

01:17:21 ◼   ► - whenever they need. - Airport.

01:17:23 ◼   ► No, like the airport base station, you know,

01:17:25 ◼   ► you don't need a Mac for that even,

01:17:27 ◼   ► you can use an iOS app for that,

01:17:28 ◼   ► you can use an iPad app for that.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I wonder if that might be the future of the Apple Watch,

01:17:33 ◼   ► that they'll still want you to sign in somewhere.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Like, are they gonna really make you put in your Apple ID

01:17:38 ◼   ► by finger on the little, or like by emoji

01:17:43 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch?

01:17:44 ◼   ► So it may be that they make it that you can, you know,

01:17:48 ◼   ► hold that Apple Watch near any iOS device

01:17:51 ◼   ► or even other devices and, you know,

01:17:55 ◼   ► or put in a code or whatever and configure it

01:17:58 ◼   ► and then have it be up and running.

01:18:00 ◼   ► could be like it would be nice if you didn't need an iPhone to at the very

01:18:05 ◼   ► least what they're going to try to do is make it less and less dependent on the

01:18:08 ◼   ► iPhone right like I can see I think it's more likely that sooner you'll have an

01:18:12 ◼   ► Apple watch that won't go talk to the iPhone for everything like if it's in

01:18:17 ◼   ► your home network like it doesn't need to glom onto your iPhone use your iPhone

01:18:22 ◼   ► cell connection or whatever it's just it's on the Wi-Fi it's doing its own

01:18:24 ◼   ► thing it doesn't need to check back with data on the iPhone which is how it

01:18:28 ◼   ► started. So I think we'll get there first because the setup is the

01:18:33 ◼   ► trick. I think that there's a lot that goes on in the setup process that you

01:18:37 ◼   ► kind of want another device for at this point. But I think beyond that, having it

01:18:41 ◼   ► be independent from an iPhone would be nice. If you have two iPhones

01:18:45 ◼   ► and one watch, you should be able to go with either one and have it work

01:18:48 ◼   ► fine. And you have two watches and one iPhone. Whatever your combinations are, I

01:18:52 ◼   ► I think it should be less tied to the iPhone, but I feel like the setup is going to be the

01:18:59 ◼   ► last.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Remember how long it took for iOS devices to be able to be set up on their own.

01:19:03 ◼   ► It actually took quite a while.

01:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think of the watch to the iPhone as the iPhone was to the Mac, right?

01:19:09 ◼   ► There was a time where you had to set it up and then sync all of your contacts and data

01:19:14 ◼   ► and podcasts through those two devices.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And then eventually it could use all that data and pull that data on its own from the

01:19:21 ◼   ► cloud and then slowly just more and more of it went away to the point that now

01:19:25 ◼   ► you can own an iPhone without ever owning a computer. There is no

01:19:32 ◼   ► computer needed anymore to have an iPhone and so like I imagine it going

01:19:36 ◼   ► that kind of route. I also imagine a future Jason where we don't even need

01:19:42 ◼   ► our iPhones because we have our Apple watches and our glasses and those two

01:19:46 ◼   ► things talk to each other right and then that's that that's your computer.

01:19:51 ◼   ► I don't honestly like I see that as a thing, but I am of the Marco Arment school of don't

01:19:58 ◼   ► bet against the smartphone. Like even though that will exist, I still think people will

01:20:03 ◼   ► want smartphones as well or like whatever those pocket computers become, which is more

01:20:08 ◼   ► than just this floating UI in front of your face. But we'll wait and see. And Brent asked,

01:20:14 ◼   ► what stock apps do you use on iOS? So I went through this. I picked out a selection of

01:20:19 ◼   ► of applications that I use frequently.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Of course, there are many applications that the app will make that I use every now and

01:20:24 ◼   ► then, like find my friends or something.

01:20:27 ◼   ► But I don't really consider that as like an app that I use a lot.

01:20:30 ◼   ► So I use Safari and Mail, whilst Chrome is my browser that I use typically even on iOS,

01:20:38 ◼   ► links open in Safari.

01:20:39 ◼   ► It's nothing I can do about it.

01:20:41 ◼   ► So I use Safari a bunch, and Mail because I have a constant fight with all email applications.

01:20:47 ◼   ► I use Messages and I use Apple Music as my music service of choice. I use the Health

01:20:53 ◼   ► and Activity apps for work out and stuff and for checking that data. I like the way that

01:20:58 ◼   ► it represents that stuff. I use Notes as my notes app. I use Notes for so much stuff.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Basically everything unless it's long form text which I typically use Bear for these

01:21:10 ◼   ► days. And I use the Files app. I use the Files app as the way to try and look into all of

01:21:15 ◼   ► my cloud connected services. I use iCloud and Dropbox mostly so use the files app and

01:21:22 ◼   ► the camera. Third party cameras are lovely and never as good as like they're never as

01:21:27 ◼   ► accessible and fast and simple as the camera that Apple puts into every phone. So that's

01:21:32 ◼   ► my list Jason what about you?

01:21:35 ◼   ► Yeah, Safari mail messages, music, reminders, and notes.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Do you use the calendar?

01:21:44 ◼   ► I don't. I use Fantastic Cal.

01:21:48 ◼   ► So, camera, sure. Photos.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Do you use notes? Do you use Apple Notes? Or do you use something else?

01:21:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I use Apple Notes.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I think they're kind of like the standard these days.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And then there are other ones that you can or can't use depending on, like,

01:22:03 ◼   ► reminders and stuff like that. Not everybody uses that. The podcast app is good, but not

01:22:07 ◼   ► everybody uses that, right? Like there are a bunch of these other applications, but I

01:22:11 ◼   ► think kind of the list that we have probably similar for most people that listen to this

01:22:16 ◼   ► show, I would expect.

01:22:17 ◼   ► All right, so that is it for today. Thank you so much for sending in your #AskUpgrade

01:22:22 ◼   ► questions to close out the show. Just send out a tweet with the #AskUpgrade and then go

01:22:26 ◼   ► into a document for us to pull from. And also if you have a question you want us to start

01:22:31 ◼   ► the show with, use the hashtag SnellTalk and that will go into another document so we can

01:22:36 ◼   ► open the show and close the show in the fun ways that we do. I want to thank our sponsors

01:22:40 ◼   ► again for their support of this episode, Pingdom, Casper and Peacock. Don't forget that we are

01:22:46 ◼   ► doing a live show, Relay FM is doing a live show at WWDC. There is still a small amount

01:22:52 ◼   ► of tickets available. If you go to autconf.com you can get tickets for our Relay FM live

01:22:58 ◼   ► show we'd love to see you there if you're going to be in San Jose for WWDC week. If

01:23:05 ◼   ► you want to find our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/187 you

01:23:12 ◼   ► can find Jason online at he's on Twitter @jasonl and he writes at sixcolors.com and Jason produces

01:23:18 ◼   ► many many many podcasts at the incomparable.com and at relay.fm you go to relay.fm/shows

01:23:25 ◼   ► you can find many shows that we do here. For example, you can listen to Free Agents or

01:23:29 ◼   ► Download or Liftoff, which is some shows that Jason produces at Relay FM. I am on Twitter,

01:23:35 ◼   ► I am @imike, I M Y K E. I also make many shows at Relay FM. If I was to list them to you

01:23:42 ◼   ► now, I would definitely forget one of them. So just, I'm not going to do that. I don't

01:23:48 ◼   ► want to break any hearts. So go to relay.fm/shows and you can find many shows there. Pick out

01:23:53 ◼   ► There's going to be something else that you like, even if you think you've already subscribed

01:23:58 ◼   ► to all of the relay FM shows that you want.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I bet there's at least one more in there.

01:24:02 ◼   ► We have lots of great stuff.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:24:06 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Class dismissed.

01:24:11 ◼   ► I should have said that last week.

01:24:12 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:24:15 ◼   ► [ Music ]