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Upgrade

182: March of Minor Products

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 182. Today's show is brought to you by Anker,

00:00:14   Freshbooks, and Mac Weldon. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always by the wonderful

00:00:18   Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell!

00:00:21   Hello, Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:22   I am very well. Jason, we have a Snell Talk question for you this week that comes in from

00:00:26   another Michael.

00:00:28   Great name. Great name. Michael wants to know, Jason, when you're working at home, as you

00:00:33   do most days, is there a time of day where you switch to using your devices for purely

00:00:39   personal use, or does everything blur together?

00:00:42   Um, everything blurs together, I would say. I don't have any artificial sort of barriers

00:00:48   where I have things that I don't check or do check. For me, and I think I've talked

00:00:53   about this a lot on the Free Agents podcast that I do with David Sparks, where we talk

00:00:58   about being independent workers. But what for me, what has happened is that my device

00:01:06   usage has a lot to do and my physical location has a lot to do with my work. So my anecdote

00:01:13   is that Sunday I had to do a little bit of work because I got a message from Myke Hurley

00:01:19   saying that he wanted me to look into the planning document for upgrade. And I had not

00:01:26   set the timer on my heater in the office to be on and we've had a cold spell here. So

00:01:32   it was cold out here and I didn't want to do that. So I actually got my iPad keyboard

00:01:37   and sat on the bed on Sunday morning trying to do my work that I usually do in front of

00:01:46   my computer at my desk. It was just a very different thing. And I realized I have really

00:01:51   compartmentalized my workspace to the point where I'm sitting there trying to work on

00:01:56   on the upgrade notes and Lauren is talking to me. She ends up getting, because it's just

00:02:04   like we, that's our hangout space and we're talking and reading and stuff like that. And

00:02:08   then she went and got like cereal and is sitting there going crunch, crunch, crunch on her

00:02:12   cereal and I'm trying to type like show notes and things. I'm like, I can't do this. I have,

00:02:16   I've become unable to do this. I have, I've been, I ended up like going into the living

00:02:20   room instead. But the point is, that's how I compartmentalize, is a lot of the kind of

00:02:26   work I do, I don't do if I'm not sitting at my desk. And that is a thing that has happened

00:02:35   over the course of the last few years, that there are certain things that I just consider

00:02:40   office things. And I think that's actually one of the great advantages of not having

00:02:47   my primary device in in the house be a Mac because it's an iPad it's more

00:02:55   complicated to do some of the things that I do less complicated to do others

00:02:59   but what it has led to is this kind of division of labor where there's kind of

00:03:03   the Mac stuff I do at my desk and then when I'm in the house I'm not doing most

00:03:08   of that stuff so I'm still online I'm still connected which is I think what

00:03:11   Michaels maybe initial idea here is do you check your email to you look at

00:03:14   Slack, things like that. The answer is yes to all that, but there are certain

00:03:18   kinds of tasks that I don't do out in the other room, or if I do, it's like

00:03:25   with my iPad, if I'm writing on my iPad in there, it's like with that

00:03:28   little setup where I have the little stand and the keyboard attached and all

00:03:32   of that, and I'm writing, and that's usually when there's nobody around. So

00:03:37   yeah, it does all blur together in one way, and it turns out that it's like the

00:03:41   the location and the hardware that are how I differentiate, which surprised me actually

00:03:45   when it happened.

00:03:46   Yeah, it's very normal to just allow everything to blur together, but the environments can

00:03:51   change things for sure, like depending on where you're sitting. And this can be, as

00:03:55   you say, like just as simple as it's just quieter here so I can get my work done in

00:04:00   this room rather than the other.

00:04:02   Now that you have your office, right, I would imagine that a lot of the work that you do

00:04:06   now, you sort of, that's work I do in the office, that's not work I do. I mean, I suppose

00:04:11   you could do it anyway. You could be like, "Oh, I just do all the same stuff whether

00:04:14   I'm on the couch or in the office." But at least for me, it very rapidly became the stuff

00:04:19   that I do in the office and then other stuff that I do elsewhere.

00:04:22   Chris: Right now, I only spend time in my office when I'm doing audio production and

00:04:28   everything else is done throughout the house. But that is because I've realized over the

00:04:34   last few days that I need to reorganize my office and change some of the furniture because

00:04:40   now I've been in it for over a year.

00:04:42   I'm recognizing what I'm actually doing in this room.

00:04:46   - There's a whole episode of free agents about this.

00:04:49   'Cause this happened to me when I bought my,

00:04:51   well, we talked about it briefly,

00:04:52   when I bought my Calax shelves from Ikea, right?

00:04:56   That was informed by after, you know,

00:04:58   you set up the office not knowing what you're doing

00:05:00   and then you do it for a little while and you're like,

00:05:01   oh, this is not how I want it set up.

00:05:04   So you've had that too.

00:05:05   - Yeah, and so I'm at that point now.

00:05:07   And I think it happens after about a year, right?

00:05:10   like you're kind of...

00:05:11   - Yeah, I let it go longer than that,

00:05:13   but I was just generally frustrated.

00:05:15   - I'm also about 18 months, but like, you know,

00:05:17   it's that kind of idea where you get to a point

00:05:19   and you're like, you have a vision in your mind

00:05:22   for what your working environment will be like,

00:05:25   but then it changes with actual usage.

00:05:28   So like one of mine is removing all of my video games

00:05:31   consoles from my office, 'cause I don't play games in here.

00:05:33   I play them in the living room with the switches.

00:05:36   That's where the better TV is.

00:05:37   So that remains moving.

00:05:39   also them removing the couch that I have,

00:05:41   and can put another desk in.

00:05:42   So like, you know, I'm kind of working it out right now

00:05:44   in my mind.

00:05:45   - Great, that's great.

00:05:46   - It's nice.

00:05:47   All right, so thank you to Michael for that question.

00:05:49   You can send in a question of any kind to start our show.

00:05:53   Just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk

00:05:55   and we'll pick them up and hopefully use it

00:05:57   in a future episode.

00:05:58   So moving to follow up, the YouTube Apple TV app

00:06:02   has gotten some updates.

00:06:03   This has been, we spoke about it I think last week.

00:06:06   I think I'm the only person in the world

00:06:08   was happy with the redesign. Everybody else hates the redesign because it doesn't make

00:06:14   the bloopy bloop sounds. But I prefer the functionality of the new YouTube app. However,

00:06:20   YouTube have made some changes. They've modified the layout for viewing subscriptions. So you

00:06:25   can win the channels that you subscribe to. It was a bit of a mess to try and view those.

00:06:30   They've changed that. But even better, they've changed some of the video scrubbing tools. So

00:06:34   Now when you pause a video, you can use the touchpad to smoothly scroll through the video

00:06:39   and it shows you a little preview on like a kind of a rolling carousel.

00:06:42   And you can also use the left and right clicky buttons on the touchpad to jump forward and back

00:06:47   10 seconds nice and smoothly. So honestly, for me, they have fixed the only problem I had with the

00:06:52   app. So I think it's great. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is my experience with Apple TV apps. We were

00:06:57   talking about there's a whole conversation that kind of came back up that I remember complaining

00:07:01   about on upgrade a while ago, a couple years ago, about, um, about like, you know, how

00:07:08   Google's apps, I was complaining, like they don't use, they didn't at the time use like

00:07:12   the iOS share icon. They use the, the Android share icon, which is the Google material design

00:07:17   share icon. But it's one of those things that if you're just an iOS user, you look at it

00:07:20   and you're like, what is that? And they actually changed over time. I spent some time talking

00:07:25   to a Google designer at XOXO, the last XOXO, and he was kind of irate, but at the same

00:07:31   time they were actually already kind of on it. And as Yasmeen, our friend who works at

00:07:38   Google now, pointed out that that is, you know, they do have some very specific sort

00:07:41   of design guidelines about honoring platforms in certain ways. You want to, this is the

00:07:46   challenge, right, is you want to reflect your overall product line, but you also want to

00:07:50   respect the user of a particular platform and the fact that they chose that platform.

00:07:54   My argument was always iOS users chose iOS, not Android. There's got to be a reason for

00:07:59   that. And so if you're Google and you say, "You know what? You really should have chosen

00:08:03   Android, and we're just going to show you Android stuff," that's bad. And likewise,

00:08:06   if Apple does that with an app, I don't know what that would be, Apple Music, I guess,

00:08:10   is all, on Android, the same rules apply. Honor the platform choice of the person who's

00:08:16   using your app. And the same for Apple, iTunes on Windows and things like that, which I've

00:08:21   heard is really bad. So for me though on Apple TV I really don't care about app UI.

00:08:28   I mean there are certain conventions of like do I have to swipe up to see the

00:08:32   menu, do I have to press the menu button, what does that do where it gets

00:08:35   frustrating. I feel like they should be consistent across apps in terms of sort

00:08:39   of moving down and back up in like a hierarchy, but the one that really gets

00:08:42   me is video control. Because like the Apple TV as a video playback device like

00:08:48   every app that does video on the Apple TV should do video playback more or less

00:08:54   like what Apple's apps do. Like, just honor the system convention for that.

00:08:59   That's the thing that frustrates me the most, and I've beaten up on them before,

00:09:03   but I'm gonna do it again because the Olympics just ended and all the video

00:09:05   was on the NBC Sports app on the Apple TV for the Olympics. And the NBC Sports

00:09:09   app is a disaster when it comes to video scrubbing. It doesn't follow any of the

00:09:14   conventions of the platform, so every time I forget, it's like you have to

00:09:18   click to pause it and then you can scrub but the scrub doesn't remember where you

00:09:25   were it's it's just it's a disaster and that so that's the thing like seeing

00:09:29   that YouTube has the tweaks for video scrubbing like if you if you behave more

00:09:33   or less doesn't have to be exact but like if the movements my thumb makes on

00:09:37   the Apple TV remote to navigate through video are more or less the same on every

00:09:41   app I'll be happy that's the thing it turns out for me anyway that is the

00:09:47   killer UI issue with the Apple TV is just make it that if I want to go forward or back

00:09:53   or pause the video or scrub through to find the thing I want, make that consistent with

00:09:58   the platform because I don't want to play a fun game where I can't figure out how to

00:10:03   go 20 seconds forward in video. Like that is awful. And the NBC app anyway, that's exactly

00:10:10   what it does and it is the worst. So yeah. So I feel like Google, they, YouTube have

00:10:16   implemented their own UI and kind of the way that it works for this but it's the

00:10:21   base functionality is the same. Right it's in in the spirit of the way you

00:10:25   move through video on Apple TV which is that's that's all I'm asking. I tend to

00:10:29   hold the relatively unpopular opinion of like sympathizing with some companies

00:10:34   over this sort of stuff. I think that this is a fine because YouTube have the

00:10:38   the way that their platform works which is suggesting more videos to you

00:10:42   Like that's how their business operates and that's what they're playing commands do because when you pause and stuff like that

00:10:49   it shows you other videos and I understand that some people don't like that, but I

00:10:53   Also don't believe that YouTube should not follow their own business just because Apple thinks they know better

00:11:01   That that's my general feeling on this stuff. We can get into this at another point again, but

00:11:07   People disagree with me vehemently. So I

00:11:11   I think, well, I mean, I think there's a balance there, right?

00:11:13   Like I don't, I think they've achieved the balance on this one.

00:11:16   That's yeah, I don't think, and I know people do disagree with you on the, on this one,

00:11:20   but I don't think every Apple TV app needs to look the same.

00:11:23   I just, I don't, the whole point of it as an app platform is that they don't need to do that.

00:11:28   And that's why I keep getting back to maybe what I really want is just a certain set of behaviors,

00:11:35   mostly involving the remote control. Cause that's the UI on the Apple TV. Like there is no trackpad.

00:11:40   I mean, well, there is a trackpad, but there's no, like, keyboard and trackpad.

00:11:44   There's no touchscreen.

00:11:45   It is that little remote with the buttons and the trackpad.

00:11:49   That's what I want to be consistent.

00:11:50   So if I press—because this happens now when Apple TV apps—I press the menu button, and,

00:11:55   like, something weird happens.

00:11:57   Like, you—like, a lot of times it'll be—it'll go back to the previous screen, but sometimes

00:12:01   it'll just exit the app.

00:12:03   Sometimes I'll swipe up and I'll get a menu.

00:12:05   Other times if I press the menu button, I get a menu.

00:12:07   those are the things along with the video scrubbing that I would like the

00:12:12   app developers to look at what the standard platform apps are at Apple TV

00:12:16   and say let's do it that way because that's how people like basic remote

00:12:21   control interaction and then within that what it looks like what happens when you

00:12:25   swipe around all that stuff that's all to play for but like there's a base

00:12:29   level where if every Apple TV app is different in how it implements the

00:12:33   remote so that like pressing any button at any time becomes a real question

00:12:39   about what's going to happen. That is bad for everybody. So that's what that's

00:12:43   where I draw the line. I get that other people don't, but for me it turns out

00:12:46   after using this Apple TV for a couple of years, that's my complaint.

00:12:51   Don't surprise me when I press a button or swipe the trackpad on the remote.

00:12:55   That's where I don't want to be surprised because imagine if you had a

00:12:59   regular TV remote and on certain channels when you press a seven it doesn't go to number

00:13:06   seven it does something completely different you'd be like why does that happen it's terrible

00:13:12   so don't mess with my my controls I guess is is what I'm saying but otherwise I think

00:13:17   I think pretty much an agreement I think I think so I think so otherwise I'm happy to

00:13:21   let YouTube be feel like YouTube yeah let them be there okay so Airplay 2 has been removed

00:13:28   from the most recent iOS 11.3 beta. Who knows what this means. Maybe they wanted to take

00:13:34   it out because they had to do extra work on it. Maybe it means it's delayed. Maybe it's

00:13:38   being pulled out with 11.3. We don't know but it was in all of the 11.3 betas but the

00:13:43   most recent one that came out just about a week ago, it was removed again. So who knows

00:13:48   what's going on with Airplay 2. I really hope that they're able to ship this soon because

00:13:54   the home pod. That's what it's supposed to do. Jason, I have a question for you.

00:14:01   When is WWDC going to happen and when is Apple going to tell us about it? When do you think

00:14:07   all this stuff is going to happen?

00:14:08   I'm not a developer, Myke. I don't know. It sounds like people are thinking it's the week

00:14:13   of the first full week of June, June 4th. I'm hoping that given last year's precedent,

00:14:20   which I think we all laid kind of at the feet of Phil Schiller and said Phil had one of

00:14:28   his little bits of reconfiguration of how developers and Apple interface is that he's

00:14:33   giving developers more time to plan their travel. That's nice. That we'll hopefully

00:14:38   find out soon. I forget when WWDC was announced last year, but let's just guess it'll be similar.

00:14:44   And then, like I said, I have no knowledge of it. June 4th that week seems like what

00:14:50   everybody we know is making hotel reservations for. It's a packed summer.

00:14:56   David: I took a guess and I've booked a hotel for the first week of July.

00:15:01   Tim: The following week is my kids' last week of school, which is traditionally right when

00:15:07   Apple does WWDC because that's when all of the special events are for my kids' school

00:15:12   and I'm at WWDC the whole time. So if that follows, then it would be the week of the

00:15:17   11th, but let's hope it's the week of the 4th. The Memorial Day weekend is the previous

00:15:22   weekend, so the 4th would be just great if that's what they do.

00:15:28   Yeah, I just think that just seems like it makes the most sense to me. What's not happened

00:15:33   yet, which is what happened last year, it was announced in February. February 16th was

00:15:40   when WWDC was announced.

00:15:41   a little bit behind now. And I'm starting to think that that was an anomaly. Was that

00:15:47   a San Jose war? Like, because they changed the event, they didn't want people going to

00:15:51   the wrong city, so they announced it early. Exactly. That's what I think. I don't know.

00:15:55   I think there's nothing stopping them from doing it early. Honestly, I think in March,

00:15:59   I think we'll find out in March. Okay. But that's just what I'm--I don't know why I

00:16:04   think this, this is just what I think. Unless it's today or the next couple of days, it

00:16:07   will be March or later. Which would be lovely.

00:16:09   But March seems fine. Because I would like to book my plane ticket.

00:16:14   So that would be really nice if I could do that.

00:16:17   Hmm. Yeah.

00:16:19   But yeah, it's rumored by looking at dates of conference centers, which is how these

00:16:25   things are always put together. Classic.

00:16:27   First week of June, June 4 to 8. That's our MAC rumors a couple of weeks ago.

00:16:31   - I am so happy that there is somebody who really likes

00:16:35   delving into conference, you know,

00:16:39   venue event calendars to make their big conspiracy theory

00:16:44   map about what is happening.

00:16:46   I will point out that it doesn't have to be this way.

00:16:51   Last, so Macworld Expo, back, dearly departed,

00:16:54   Macworld Expo, when you left the building,

00:16:58   the big banner on the inside of the expo center said, see you next year and had

00:17:05   the dates of the next year's event.

00:17:07   We'll be back.

00:17:08   Yeah.

00:17:09   Right.

00:17:09   So, so that's what we need from Apple is Apple needs to have like on the Friday,

00:17:15   on a Friday evening of WWDC, you should get a push notification saying you should

00:17:19   check your WWDC DC app.

00:17:21   And when you do, it says WWDC will return on these dates.

00:17:28   And then you press okay, and it deletes itself and that's the end something like that

00:17:32   Get on it Apple. Oh

00:17:35   Love that that would be so good. All right next week on the show. We're gonna do Myke at the movies

00:17:43   We're gonna be talking about aliens. If you want to play along that will be our final segment of next week's episode

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00:20:06   So there was a report at Bloomberg from Mark Gorman a couple of days ago that Apple is going

00:20:15   to be revising the AirPods. This makes perfect sense considering there was supposed to be

00:20:23   a new case with wireless charging. If they're going to go through that hassle, maybe upgrade

00:20:30   the AirPods as well. So they have like a version 2, apparently you'll still be able to buy

00:20:34   the case if you want to, right, so you can use your current ones. I think that's what

00:20:38   they said when they announced the AirPower mat, which BTW, where is that?

00:20:43   - But where is it?

00:20:45   - There's 10 more months in 2018.

00:20:47   So did they say early or I think they just said

00:20:51   sometime next year. - I can't remember

00:20:52   their actual press.

00:20:55   Like, no at the time. - Plenty of time.

00:20:57   - But the website, I checked it.

00:20:58   It just says coming in 2018.

00:21:00   - Yeah, see, so we got lots of time for the AirPower.

00:21:03   There are some rumors that March, your favorite month,

00:21:07   that there are some rumors that March might be

00:21:10   when the AirPower thing finally ships.

00:21:12   - My kind of feeling on that is that that will drop.

00:21:16   There was some rumors about a revision to the iPad,

00:21:19   the 9.7 inch iPad for March as well,

00:21:22   'cause there was some European version

00:21:26   of SCC approvals for some iPads.

00:21:28   - Maybe the iPhone SE will get updated then too.

00:21:30   It's the March of minor products.

00:21:33   - Well, I honestly think that that will happen

00:21:36   because this is what they've done in the past, right?

00:21:39   You just throw out a bunch of press releases

00:21:40   for some products that people were not like hugely excited about, right? Like you just

00:21:45   put them out there and you have like, here's AirPower and some new iPads and some new AirPods.

00:21:52   I expect that that's going to happen at some point in March. Yeah, this is like, there

00:21:58   was some in kind of in Europe and Asia, there's some new regulation stuff and some countries

00:22:03   like Belarus and Kazakhstan popped up on the kind of FCC like stuff that these iPads are

00:22:10   going through and they look to be the 9.7s,

00:22:12   which matches up with some supply chain stuff.

00:22:14   So anyway, so the rumor for the AirPods

00:22:18   is that there's gonna be an upgraded wireless chip,

00:22:20   so the W2 most likely,

00:22:23   which will allow you to be able to call Siri

00:22:27   via the trigger word,

00:22:29   which we will refer to as a high telephone as we always do,

00:22:32   and that they will be water resistant, not waterproof.

00:22:37   They will be like, they'll be at the level

00:22:39   that the iPhone is.

00:22:40   So like, the watch is like waterproof.

00:22:43   You can swim with it, right?

00:22:45   The phone is water resistant.

00:22:46   So you can get water on it, you can maybe drop it in water

00:22:49   and it'll be okay.

00:22:50   And that's kind of the route that they're going down

00:22:52   with the AirPods as well.

00:22:55   So I guess you can safely have them on in the rain

00:22:58   would be my, kind of like what they would show for that.

00:23:01   - That seems like what they're saying.

00:23:02   - 'Cause I can't really think of how else

00:23:05   you would get them wet specifically, right?

00:23:07   Like you couldn't swim with these things in,

00:23:09   even if they were waterproof, right?

00:23:11   Because they would fall out of your ears.

00:23:13   So I guess my question really is,

00:23:18   does this excite you in any way?

00:23:20   Like, is this anything you actually really want

00:23:22   from your AirPods?

00:23:24   - This is interesting.

00:23:25   I mean, it's great to hear Apple doing what they do,

00:23:27   which is incrementing products forward.

00:23:30   And you and I have,

00:23:31   we had an Ask Upgrade question a while ago

00:23:33   about what about a next AirPods.

00:23:37   And the challenge, right, is, I mean, I feel this way.

00:23:41   I assume you feel this way too, which is,

00:23:43   they're so good that it actually makes it hard for me to,

00:23:48   I mean, maybe not imagine new features,

00:23:49   but like they're so good that I just think they're great.

00:23:53   Like, take your time, Apple, these are fine.

00:23:56   And so, you know, you end up with wireless charger.

00:23:59   Sure, that sounds great.

00:24:00   Water resistance, sure.

00:24:01   I mean push that forward, people who are getting out in the rain and all of that, or just getting

00:24:07   sweat on them to make them more resilient for that stuff. Great. The rumor that they're

00:24:12   going to listen, which is funny because when the idea of listening for the Ahoy Earbuds

00:24:20   is I thought, wow, that's a lot of intelligence to put in them, and then I realized it's not

00:24:23   really. All they really have to do is have enough power and processing ability for the

00:24:29   microphones to be listening just for the trigger, at which point they do the

00:24:34   equivalent of pushing the button and the device that it's paired with handles the

00:24:38   request. And so it's not like it's not quite like adding it to the Apple Watch.

00:24:43   It's a little bit lighter. But these are all nice. It's just I have one of

00:24:47   those things where I have a hard time, it's the irony of not getting super

00:24:51   excited about the prospect of AirPods updates because I think the AirPods are

00:24:56   so good already.

00:24:57   Can you think of anything that you would want from the AirPods?

00:25:04   I have a couple of things, personally.

00:25:07   I mean, I think ultimately they do need more battery life.

00:25:12   Yep.

00:25:13   I would expect that by the way, right?

00:25:14   So like this new version with the W2, I would, if they don't say that like, oh, it's increased

00:25:21   performance which gets you better battery life, I would be very, very surprised about

00:25:24   that.

00:25:25   feels like something that at this age of a product's life cycle, it should be getting

00:25:29   better battery like how the Apple Watch did. Not that the battery life honestly is ever

00:25:34   really a problem for the AirPods, I never have a problem with them. Which is funny because

00:25:39   it's an intermittent charging device, you only charge it every now and then but I never

00:25:42   have them die on me. But it would just be nice to hear them say that the AirPods themselves,

00:25:49   not just the case, the AirPods last longer so you can wear them for longer. Because you

00:25:54   know sometimes if I'm on a transatlantic flight they will die on me before I arrive.

00:26:00   Yeah I have that every so often I will be I'll go for a walk and I'll come back and

00:26:04   I'm still listening to a podcast and I'll be wandering around the house and at some

00:26:06   point I get that little you know that little beep that's the bloo. The one that the first

00:26:10   time it happens you're like what the heck is that right because you've never heard it

00:26:14   before and I didn't ever expect it. Your AirPods are talking to you right and I get that and

00:26:19   I think oh right yeah the AirPods battery life isn't spectacular and yeah they charge

00:26:23   up pretty fast and you can put them back in, but I think in general that should be a goal

00:26:29   of these things. I think consumer acceptance of them, despite the fact that they've got

00:26:34   the long kind of stems off of the end, the long beams, I still feel like in the end one

00:26:42   of their goals is probably going to be to make those shorter, but I also understand

00:26:46   that that's where all the electronics are and there are probably other things to prioritize

00:26:49   because I'm sure they would love it if it could just be a thing that just pops right

00:26:53   in your ear with almost nothing visible like on the outside, but I think it's going to

00:26:58   be a long time. And then the other thing that I can think of is also going to be something

00:27:02   that is a long time in coming, which is at some point they should just be like, there

00:27:09   should be like a whole Apple watch in there, but it's so miniaturized that I think it's

00:27:13   going to be a long time, and I think Apple figures you've got other devices for connectivity

00:27:17   stuff so they don't need to rush on that. And that's why I come back to like colors,

00:27:21   Myke. Colors. I want colors.

00:27:22   Myke: Yeah, I want colors and I think they should make colors. It's kind of wild to me

00:27:27   that they don't. And I would still like some other less aggressive way of controlling them

00:27:36   than the taps. I don't know what that is or maybe like making the sensors for the tapping

00:27:42   more smart, you know, a little bit more sensitive. I don't know what the answer to that is, but

00:27:49   that is the one thing I don't like about the AirPods is the thunking on the side of my

00:27:53   head. I'm not a fan of that. And I would like to see something more, something better happen

00:27:58   there.

00:27:59   Well, one of the nice things that happens with having Ahoy Earbuds is you don't have

00:28:04   to tap at all anymore for hands-free.

00:28:08   I know you can do that.

00:28:09   I don't want to talk either. I know.

00:28:10   I don't want to do it.

00:28:11   - Yeah, well, I can see how having a different kind of gesture might be useful, right? Like,

00:28:19   a touch gesture or something where you don't have to actually do the big bump, but you

00:28:24   can just touch.

00:28:25   - Yeah, touch is what I want. I want it to be sensitive to touch, not sensitive to accelerometer

00:28:29   movement. That's the big difference.

00:28:32   - We should mention the other rumor that's out there, which is that Apple actually is

00:28:35   gonna do its own question mark headphones in the style of AirPods.

00:28:42   What do you think about this? I honestly the world of over-ear headphones is just a mystery

00:28:48   to me because I don't like them. I don't use them. I've never used them. I hate them. So

00:28:54   I'm gonna leave it to you. I think it's fascinating that there might be a place between Beats

00:28:57   and AirPods that's an Apple branded one and that's a that's like I assume that you know

00:29:04   Apple would just ride the Beats brand, but I wonder if they figure like they can make like a premium

00:29:09   Apple branded thing where people who might not buy a Beats headphone, but they buy an Apple headphone even if it's very similar to

00:29:16   The the wireless beats that are out there

00:29:20   Maybe it's got a different sound like Marco our friend Marco Arment was commenting on how he was intrigued by this

00:29:26   Because he uses over-ear headphones and doesn't like the Beats ones the sound of them. I think it was Marco

00:29:32   But there are definitely people out there who are like, "Oh no, it wasn't Marco, it

00:29:35   was Federico. Federico didn't like them and he was intrigued by this." So maybe there's

00:29:39   a case for something that does not have the Beats sound but is still using Apple's wireless

00:29:45   technology and some people don't know anything about Beats but they see the Apple logo on

00:29:49   it in the Apple store and they're like, "Oh, okay, Apple makes these, that's great." So

00:29:52   I hope they're not white. But I think it's interesting like…

00:29:58   They 100% will be white, Jason. Oh my god, can you imagine the smudges on that? Anyway,

00:30:05   I think Apple's got this tech and it's only in the two products now and they really like it

00:30:09   and so why would they not put in other products, right? Of theirs.

00:30:13   I agree that this almost feels like an inevitability now that I've seen it.

00:30:17   It's like, yeah, of course, right? Of course. You have this technology that is built specifically

00:30:23   for wearables and headphones. Why would you not have more? Apple have always had different

00:30:29   lines of headphones. They've always had the ones that go in your ear, the more expensive ones,

00:30:35   but then they just do the white ones. Why not just do this? They have the knowledge of Beats

00:30:41   to help them put this stuff together. Honestly, I think that these will just effectively be Apple

00:30:47   branded Beats headphones of a slightly different profile of audio and the W2 chip. I think that's

00:30:54   just what these will be and that would be a great product and would probably be something that a lot

00:31:01   of people will buy. I wouldn't. I don't think I particularly would want these because the only

00:31:06   time I use these types of headphones is on a plane and I think I prefer and I prefer having a cable

00:31:13   for the plane. I would only want these if this is not going to happen, if there was

00:31:17   a way to connect it with a cable to just a regular headphone jack, because I want to

00:31:23   be able to take one set of headphones that I can play with my iPhone with an adapter

00:31:28   and plug into my Nintendo Switch and plug into the airplane system and all that kind

00:31:33   of stuff. So just a pure wireless over-the-ear headphones wouldn't necessarily fit my use

00:31:39   case for over-the-ear headphones.

00:31:41   Yeah, yeah, but I think a lot of people would love them. So it makes sense.

00:31:46   Because there are people that will buy these, like in the same way that they have at Apple,

00:31:51   that people just want these. Like why wouldn't they? This is a genius product to make.

00:31:54   I think, and I'm trying not to be cynical when I say this, but I think this is one of

00:31:59   the ways that Tim Cook and Tim Cook's Apple behaves, which is what proprietary technology

00:32:07   do we have? What products are we good at making? What product opportunities are there for us

00:32:12   to make more money? Let's not leave those sitting out there, right? And this is a case

00:32:18   where they can make these products, they will be good, they're not going to be bad, they'll

00:32:23   be good, and they will sell a lot and make a lot of money. And I think Tim Cook, his

00:32:29   reign, that is one of the things that I've noticed about it, right, is provide products

00:32:34   in all the different categories, lots of different price points. If there's something we can

00:32:38   make that people will buy, let's make it. Right? Especially if it's good. I'm sure these will

00:32:45   be good. I have no doubt because the AirPods are good. They've got the knowledge from Beats

00:32:50   about headphones. I think these will be good for a certain audience who is not me.

00:32:55   So you wanted to talk about ARM Macs today.

00:32:58   What's going on?

00:32:59   - I know, it's like a blast from the past.

00:33:02   I thought that it was a very 2017 thing

00:33:05   to talk about ARM Macs.

00:33:06   Why would we talk about them now?

00:33:08   Why would we talk about what if Macs ran ARM processors

00:33:11   like the Apple design processors that are in iOS devices?

00:33:15   I brought this up, it's Stephen Hackett's fault.

00:33:17   Okay, so I blame Stephen.

00:33:19   So last week on Download,

00:33:21   podcast that Stephen and I do with a panel,

00:33:25   I was traveling so Steven put the show together and then I just was the

00:33:28   talking head who asked the questions, which is kind of interesting. And the

00:33:35   documentation for Windows devices running ARM came out. So Microsoft is

00:33:41   trying again to do a whole like separate line of Windows that runs on ARM

00:33:51   processors. It's Windows 10, but it's on ARM and we got the list. There was

00:33:57   like a leaked document and so there was a list of stuff that Windows ARM

00:34:03   laptops won't do. Now why would you have a Windows ARM laptop? The answer is the

00:34:07   same reason you might have a Mac ARM laptop, which is they're going to get way

00:34:10   better battery life. Like dramatically shockingly better battery life than an

00:34:15   Intel laptop would. That's the reason you would do it. But on Windows

00:34:19   anyway. 64-bit apps won't work. Certain classes of apps won't work without being

00:34:25   recompiled for ARM, and that will probably not happen. None of the legacy

00:34:30   x86 Windows drivers that exist for Windows, every other Windows PC, those

00:34:35   won't work. There's no Hyper-V, so there's basically no virtualization to

00:34:38   speak of, you know, and certainly no easy virtualization to speak of. And a lot of

00:34:46   older games and graphics apps won't necessarily work because only certain

00:34:52   modern versions of DirectX will be supported. So the idea here is that

00:34:55   basically the idea that you could buy a PC and it's a PC and depending on the

00:35:01   specs it'll do everything that Windows does and compatibility has always

00:35:06   been like a huge strength of Microsoft and also their weakness because they've

00:35:09   got this huge install base and it's hard to make a break.

00:35:13   So here's Microsoft trying for the second time to kind of make a break and say,

00:35:16   look, there's a lot of benefit to having ARM processors in these things.

00:35:20   We're going to make them our partners are making them but some of this compatibility

00:35:25   that you've come to rely on for old stuff is just not there.

00:35:29   And so if you need that don't buy one of these buy buy a regular laptop,

00:35:33   right the it's not like they're deprecating Intel PC.

00:35:39   So that's not happening, but they're creating a class of computer that runs

00:35:42   Windows 10 that doesn't do a lot of the stuff, the kind of old legacy stuff that a certain

00:35:49   part of the PC market wants, feels they want, requires in some way. They may or may not

00:35:54   use it, but they require it. Okay, so all this is interesting from an Apple perspective.

00:36:00   It's sort of like, "Alright, whatever, forget it, it's Windows town." But it got me thinking

00:36:07   this thought process again about Apple, which is, and so this is a question I would ask you,

00:36:14   which is, what would you give up to get a MacBook that has 20 hours of battery life,

00:36:20   or 15 hours of battery life? Because that's basically what Microsoft is saying here, is,

00:36:24   yeah, it runs Windows, but not all of this stuff. And I think that's a really interesting proposition,

00:36:31   like, how much of what you assume being, you know, it being a Mac is, are you willing to forego

00:36:41   in exchange for having this kind of incredible battery life? And probably it's super small and

00:36:49   thin, it's like a MacBook, but like with way better battery life. I don't know, what would

00:36:53   you give up? What would you be willing to give up? Well, before I answer that, what this honestly

00:36:58   sounds like to me is what somebody goes through when they decide to work on an iPad.

00:37:05   It's like you give up all of the old stuff that a computer can do.

00:37:10   That's effectively like what's happening here.

00:37:12   I mean I know that Windows is still running on it, but what you're getting rid of is a

00:37:16   lot of legacy, right?

00:37:18   So when you're talking about certain types of apps needing to be redone, it's because

00:37:23   there's no shell extensions anymore, right?

00:37:26   So all of that stuff has to be removed before it can work.

00:37:30   So it kind of just feels like to me, yeah this is what happens when somebody decides

00:37:34   to switch to iPad.

00:37:36   They have to shed themselves as their old ways of thinking about computers and then

00:37:42   pick up again from what are all the good things about this new thing.

00:37:46   However if Apple made something like this, the reason people would want it over an iPad

00:37:52   is that it runs Mac OS and therefore runs at least some Mac OS apps, right? I honestly

00:38:00   could see this being a world in which like if Apple ever did this it would just be like

00:38:04   App Store only apps is a possibility but that's maybe a question for another day. Me personally,

00:38:10   if I could get all of the apps that I wanted, like this would make sense to me, like sure,

00:38:16   like I can work with that, right? That seems like a great thing, like we'll just go with

00:38:19   it. Like, sure, fine, I'm happy with it. I can get huge battery life from my laptop,

00:38:26   which would be good for me when I'm traveling, and then I can use logic on a plane or Final

00:38:31   Cut on a plane and it will work absolutely fine. So yeah, I personally would do this,

00:38:36   right? And I would give up whatever I needed to give up because a Mac user like me is still

00:38:42   probably going to be able to do everything that they want to do anyway, right? Because

00:38:46   I'm not deep inside of AppleScript or whatever, but I think that this type of thing, it is

00:38:55   that reason, it is the reason of giving up all the old stuff, which makes me think personally

00:39:00   that Apple's just never going to do this. And what they will do is what we have been

00:39:06   talking about and you've been talking about forever, creating that middle ground computer.

00:39:11   the thing in between the iPad and the Mac, which is more like the Mac but runs on an

00:39:17   ARM processor, rather than taking what they currently have, stripping away all of the

00:39:21   stuff that's just going to make people mad because they can't do it anymore, and saying

00:39:25   here is Mac OS on ARM, and you can't do any of the stuff that makes a computer a computer

00:39:30   to you.

00:39:31   Yeah, the argument is that if—and Apple has followed this so far, which is Microsoft

00:39:37   has been making lots of changes to Windows, but Microsoft only has Windows. Apple has

00:39:40   iOS and the Mac. And the argument is, the Mac's strength is that it's the Mac and it's

00:39:46   everything you expect from a Mac. And why turn, if you're going to turn the Mac into

00:39:52   something it's not, then it's not the Mac anymore. And it's, you know, among Android,

00:40:00   Windows, iOS, and macOS, it's the least popular of them. It's the second most popular OS run

00:40:08   by Apple. Like, it's not... So this is the question. Does Apple want to invest any time

00:40:15   or effort into creating a half Mac thing that would be actually great for certain people?

00:40:24   I get the feeling that maybe the MacBook was at one point going to be this, and they already

00:40:29   made this decision, which was, "Eh, let's not do that." Like, what if we had the Mac

00:40:34   running on ARM in a little thing like the MacBook. So they may have already just made

00:40:40   this decision, we've seen it and that's the end of it, but I think it's this interesting

00:40:43   question of like if you're Apple, do you do that? Do you say, "Well, we're gonna make

00:40:48   a Mac that's not quite a Mac." Or do you say, "Look, the Mac should always be the Mac. It

00:40:52   should be what it's gonna be. We're gonna keep it around, but we're not going to invest

00:40:56   in a fraction of the Mac market, which is already pretty small, that runs this totally

00:41:04   different processor architecture, even if what that would get you is like a laptop that

00:41:08   runs iWork and maybe Microsoft Office and some other stuff, but doesn't do a lot of

00:41:14   things that you're used to doing. And the argument could be that at that point, yeah,

00:41:19   you could also just do that on iOS, which is, I just think it's fascinating. What fascinates

00:41:24   me about it is people are going to start comparing these ARM laptops that run Windows to Mac

00:41:30   laptops, right? That's gonna happen. And Apple's gonna look bad, right? I mean, I think that's

00:41:39   gonna happen because these things are gonna have insane battery life. Now maybe they'll

00:41:43   be slow and maybe the, you know, the Mac, but the MacBook's kind of slow too, right?

00:41:49   It's gonna be at least a possibility that Apple's gonna look kind of behind the game

00:41:53   here. But I'm not sure this is a game Apple wants to play. I don't think, I'm not sure.

00:42:00   could. They could do it. Like, there's nothing stopping Apple from doing this. But do they

00:42:05   want to play that game, or do they want to keep their eyes on something else? And that's

00:42:09   -- I just, I mean, I don't have an answer here, because this is, I feel like, one of

00:42:13   the big questions of our time in terms of what Apple is strategizing, is like, how far

00:42:18   do you take the Mac, and when do you step away and say, "We're not taking it any further

00:42:23   down this road than we've already brought it." The Mac is the Mac, and it's going to

00:42:27   to remain so. But when you see what Microsoft is doing, Microsoft of all companies saying

00:42:33   we're breaking a lot of legacy stuff that is like that's their bread and butter is the

00:42:37   legacy stuff and they're like nope we're not going to do it. I get why they're doing it.

00:42:41   I think it's actually kind of smart. We'll see the what Carolina Milanese said on download

00:42:46   last week was Microsoft talks about doing making these breaks all the time but will

00:42:50   they will they live up to it. Will they go back on themselves. There is a thing about

00:42:54   I want to compare between Microsoft and Apple here.

00:42:58   So what will happen is Microsoft will start making these PCs or having their OEMs make

00:43:03   PCs as well and they're going to be like, "We're getting 20 to 30 hours of battery life

00:43:10   or something insane."

00:43:11   I know it's not going to be that much, but they say 20 hours of battery life.

00:43:16   But that's all Microsoft do.

00:43:20   going to be compared to them and be like "oh the macbooks don't do this" and blah blah blah

00:43:24   and then that will be that and people will be upset but I don't think Apple are going to do it

00:43:29   because it doesn't necessarily matter to them. This is Microsoft. This is the product that they

00:43:34   make. They make PCs. That's all they got is Windows, right? They have no tablets that people

00:43:39   want and they have no phones that people want. They don't even have a phone division anymore.

00:43:43   So like they have to do this because if they don't do this they have nothing to sell.

00:43:48   Apple don't have to do this. They're still going to sell the Mac whether it's got 15 hours of battery life or seven

00:43:55   Because they'll also sell their iPads which get 10 hours of battery life

00:43:59   And you know what Apple could probably start pushing that if if these if these PCs start getting 15 to 20 hours

00:44:05   I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple starting to push battery life on the iPads

00:44:09   Which is clearly not being a priority because the battery life of 10 hours is really all you need

00:44:15   But it will give them a number that they can compare it to and they'll be like well

00:44:18   This is this does 15 hours about your life and is the future of computing anyway, right?

00:44:22   That's kind of right probably what they'll talk about

00:44:24   but they don't need to compete with Microsoft on the battery life of their laptops because

00:44:30   The Mac is not as important to Apple financially as the PC is to Microsoft, right?

00:44:37   Yeah

00:44:38   No

00:44:38   It's it's it's very much a if Microsoft jumped off a bridge

00:44:41   would you jump off a bridge kind of thing and Apple doesn't need to do that

00:44:44   Apple Apple doesn't have to do that if Apple wanted to make a great battery

00:44:49   life touchscreen super thin and light laptop today they could absolutely do it

00:44:54   and it would be an iOS laptop it would be that iBook that that I've written

00:44:59   about a few times I'm not saying they're going to do that either right but I do

00:45:03   here's the thing though I look at these products and I think Apple's got to do

00:45:08   something. Is the MacBook their entire answer here? Is the MacBook running Intel processors?

00:45:14   Can they update that and say, "This is our answer to these laptops, these Windows laptops.

00:45:21   This is..." And again, Apple doesn't have to do Windows device for device. So many Mac

00:45:27   users are Mac users. They choose that. They're not like, "I'll use any operating system as

00:45:31   long as there's a piece of hardware that I want to buy." There aren't a lot of users

00:45:35   who feel that way. But still, I think there's some pride there. Like, if we have these laptops

00:45:42   and Apple's going to compete with them, what is that product? And is it just a revved MacBook

00:45:48   again? Or is it something else? Because Apple, I feel like Apple could compete with these

00:45:53   products three different ways, but it's probably not going to choose all three ways. It's going

00:45:57   to choose one or maybe two. So I don't know. Again, no answers here because, you know,

00:46:03   sometimes the analysis is fun because it's like, "Here's what I think Apple can do."

00:46:07   In this case, it's like, "Apple can do any of these things. What does Apple want to do?"

00:46:12   And that we don't know.

00:46:14   I think that we're more likely to see Apple make your iOS laptop before a macOS ARM laptop.

00:46:26   Yeah, I mean, unless they really just change directions, but I've seen nothing. By the

00:46:35   way, News Alert just came in from the chat room. Microsoft has apparently started selling

00:46:39   Lumia phones again. Nobody understands why.

00:46:42   I'm looking at this now and there's a report on Gizmodo. They just appeared.

00:46:46   Extra stock?

00:46:47   It looks like they said, like, the Gizmodo reports is what I would expect. It looks like

00:46:52   they just found a pallet of these somewhere.

00:46:53   That's right. It's like the Flying Dutchman. This phone appears and disappears every so

00:46:58   often.

00:46:59   This is not a revival of Microsoft's smartphone plan. They just have some stock they need

00:47:05   to dump.

00:47:06   Nokia is going to sell that phone from the Matrix.

00:47:09   The banana phone?

00:47:10   Yeah.

00:47:11   Yeah. Nokia is doing some stuff. More power to them. They're trying to get back in the

00:47:17   game. I think that's pretty cool. Because they're doing what they do. They're making

00:47:21   cheap phones, Android One phones, and so on.

00:47:28   Somebody has to make those phones, it should be a company that knows what they're doing.

00:47:35   Okay so let's take a break to thank our second sponsor this week and that is Anchor. Anchor

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00:49:20   Tim Cynova Breaking news, Myke, breaking news from Mark

00:49:25   Germin at Bloomberg as we worked on the show, listener viewed it in the chat room, pasted

00:49:30   this link in. I wouldn't say that this is a new rumor so much because I feel like the

00:49:37   supply chain and KGI already had this rumor, but Grumberg, yeah, sure, Gurman at Bloomberg

00:49:45   is reporting this story that we talked about a while ago, which is that Apple is intending

00:49:51   on releasing, one, an iPhone 10 Plus, essentially, a larger OLED screen in the style of the iPhone

00:50:00   10, which I think is fair to call, at least for now, an iPhone 10 Plus this fall. And

00:50:07   a replacement for the iPhone 8 product line, which, according to Germin's report, the feeling

00:50:13   is it looks too much like, you know, because it's the iPhone 6 design, it doesn't look

00:50:17   new. And so what they're, what, according to Germin, they're planning on doing is creating

00:50:23   something that looks very much like the iPhone 10, but has an LCD screen and has, you know,

00:50:28   aluminum bezel and is not made of like the premium materials and stuff that are

00:50:32   in the iPhone 10 that allows them to sell it at a lower price but has more of

00:50:36   an iPhone 10 look about it and I assume that would be like the iPhone 9. So yeah

00:50:41   this is a confirmation of Ming-Chi Kuo's report that we were talking about a few weeks ago.

00:50:45   Exactly. So it's not quite new and it's Mark Gurman and Debbie Wu on the

00:50:50   byline there but it was just as we started this morning this came out.

00:50:54   So it's yes, it's a very similar kind of story

00:50:59   than what we've heard, which is, it's interesting.

00:51:01   Like, I mean, and he frames it as iPhone 10 sales

00:51:04   haven't been as strong as Apple had hoped.

00:51:08   I'm not entirely 100% sure I buy that part

00:51:11   of the narrative here,

00:51:12   but certainly when we all discussed

00:51:14   where Apple could go next,

00:51:16   a plus version is something that you and I both talked about.

00:51:19   And then I think it's intriguing this idea that, you know,

00:51:24   people buy phones because they look new, not just because they are new, and the

00:51:28   problem with the iPhone 8 is that it looks just like the iPhone 7 and 6s and

00:51:33   6. And so do you want to do a next generation or a next version of the

00:51:38   iPhone for 2018 that is literally just the 6, 6s, 7, and 8 again? And the answer

00:51:45   here would seem to be no. Instead we're going to make it look more like our

00:51:50   super hot high-end 10 except it'll be you know made of cheaper materials because it

00:51:56   won't have the OLED screen and it won't have the the stainless steel and you know who knows

00:52:01   what other details are in there and I think that's I think that's not a not not an unbelievable

00:52:09   rumor that seems that seems reasonable as a product direction for them.

00:52:13   Yeah, I'm really struggling to get my head around these two ideas in parallel, right?

00:52:21   Like one, that the iPhone X isn't selling as well as they'd hoped.

00:52:26   But they sold a lot of iPhones, which therefore means they must have sold a lot of 8 and 8+.

00:52:33   But then you're making a phone that looks like the iPhone X because you want to make

00:52:37   sure that people buy your phones.

00:52:39   they were buying the 8 and 8 plus if they didn't sell a lot of iPhone 10s. It doesn't

00:52:44   marry up for me. The logic is there in each of the individual components, right? I understand

00:52:50   the logic of all of them independently, but when you piece them all together, they don't

00:52:56   marry up anymore.

00:52:58   This is the challenge with reading a lot of these reports that have some details, and

00:53:04   we've talked about it before with Germin, but I think he's a very good reporter with

00:53:08   good sources. Since he's been at Bloomberg though, I definitely feel like Bloomberg wants

00:53:12   to apply more of a broad narrative to every one of his stories. Like, at 9to5Mac he can

00:53:16   make news by saying, "Oh, I can confirm that report that they're working on on iPhone 10+."

00:53:21   Right? And he would write that story with a little bit of background. But Bloomberg

00:53:24   editors seem to want to put it in the grand story of what's going on with Apple, and that

00:53:29   means fitting it into a narrative. And, you know, again, having only read this story while

00:53:35   we were on the air here it looks to me like the product stuff is probably solid

00:53:42   and then the reasons why are imagined like based on the near existing

00:53:47   narrative and existing like what we've already talked about how maybe the

00:53:51   iPhone 10 sales are disappointing and this and that but like I discount when I

00:53:56   read these stories I largely discount the reasons why and just stick to the

00:54:01   reports about the like there's a new product here because the reasons why are

00:54:05   trying to build that build that narrative and Bloomberg wants to do that

00:54:09   I get why they want to do that their audience is going to be a little less

00:54:13   breathless perhaps about the specs of an iPhone 10 plus than the 9 to 5 Mac

00:54:18   audience is but it does lead to some head scratching moments where you're

00:54:23   like yeah I don't know if that actually makes sense

00:54:26   I'm not clear if it's actually like I don't generally see in these stories you

00:54:30   know somebody who's familiar with Apple's strategy says that this is what the strategy

00:54:35   is. Instead those are often sort of like just stated as facts without any sort of like according

00:54:40   to the people which is also weird. So yeah there's a lot to think about on that one.

00:54:45   I haven't read the report yet because it's breaking news but that's very it is very interesting

00:54:50   and I want it and I want the iPhone 10 plus. I don't care what it is I want it because

00:54:55   that's I'm crazy like that. There was an article by Charles Arthur. Who is Charles Arthur?

00:55:01   - He's a tax journalist in your nation, the United Kingdom. And he wrote a little thing

00:55:11   about the, basically his MacBook Pro died. And so he's just started using his iPad Pro

00:55:24   instead. And it's a good story, we'll put a link in. He has a newsletter, a daily newsletter

00:55:32   called "The Overspill." And it was kind of cool to see somebody who was not like, "Alright,

00:55:38   here I am, I'm going to make the leap." But more like, "Oh, I need to continue doing my

00:55:42   job and my laptop broke. I'm just going to use the iPad Pro. It's here. I can do it."

00:55:46   And then he went through the details and he, you know, he's got Word and Scrivener working

00:55:53   on his book, he's got Google docs and Skype and all of that stuff works. He has some workflow

00:56:00   stuff that he built and even some Pythonista scripts that he built so it's a little shades

00:56:05   of Federico.

00:56:06   Yeah, it's like he went through the process that everybody goes through but it's not a

00:56:11   process you go through until you go through it. Like he went through the process of somebody

00:56:18   moving to the iPad, but he did it under duress instead of interest, but he still took the

00:56:27   same path that you took and I took and Federico took. Like, "Oh, okay, so I'm going to use

00:56:33   this thing for whatever reason, and what if I need to do this? Oh, what if I need to do

00:56:37   that? And what if I need to do that? Oh, this works. Oh, and this works, and this works,

00:56:40   and this works, and I might need this workaround, but I can still make it happen."

00:56:44   And here are the five or six things that don't work very well. And he nails those two. That's

00:56:49   the thing that I really was delighted by this is somebody with somewhat fresh eyes looking on this

00:56:53   subject. And like he mentioned, lapability, which I think is actually a huge problem in all the

00:56:58   tablets that try to also be laptops is sitting in a lap like a laptop is they're not good at it.

00:57:04   Like the Microsoft Surface has a kickstand. The smart keyboard has its kind of like folding thing.

00:57:10   they're not super stable in your lap. They're kind of made for being on a table. I actually

00:57:15   tweeted at him and I said I ended up getting the bridge keyboard because I really wanted to

00:57:18   have that laptop context and that was the only way I could do it because it's definitely a failing of

00:57:25   all these products. He talked about selecting text is painful. Websites that are even on a

00:57:32   12.9-inch iPad Pro, they are convinced that you need the mobile version of their site, which is

00:57:37   so frustrating. Like, you know, I'm not using a phone here. I'm using a 13-inch computer.

00:57:44   Just give me the regular version of your site. And some other stuff that he found. It's really good.

00:57:49   It was a really good story, and it brought back the sort of, like, thoughts. I just was traveling

00:57:54   for a week, and I didn't bring my laptop, and I didn't even think about it. I just traveled with

00:57:59   my iPad, and it was fine. I recorded a couple of podcasts. I used my little Wi-Fi box thing that

00:58:06   does the transfers really fast from the memory card in my recorder over to my iPad so I can

00:58:11   add it on the iPad because Apple doesn't let you actually copy audio files off of a SD

00:58:18   card with their own adapter, so I have to use a workaround, but it works. I brought

00:58:22   my external keyboard, although it turns out I only use that a couple of times because

00:58:25   I was trying to actually be on vacation and not work. And it just struck me that I went

00:58:32   through this where Charles Arthur is. I don't do all of my work on the iPad

00:58:36   because I do use my Mac, but if my Mac died I would find a way to do my

00:58:41   job with my iPad just fine. I wanted to use this though as a way to check in

00:58:45   with you and see where are you on iPad stuff right now.

00:58:49   No change. I'm using the iPad as much as I ever have. Again, like as a reiteration

00:58:56   for anybody tuning in right like I use the iPad I use iOS for all of my work that is non-production

00:59:03   so if I am not recording or editing a podcast I am on my iPad. This includes entertainment,

00:59:10   games and videos as well as all of my email, all of my show preparation, all of my social media,

00:59:15   all of my business running happens on my iPad. And iOS 11 has been a huge step for me

00:59:26   productivity wise. I have settled with iOS 11 very nicely. The multitasking for me is so much better.

00:59:33   The flexibility of being able to move the apps around, switch them around, have a third slide out,

00:59:38   that has really, really significantly improved my workflows. The Files app has extended the system

00:59:45   so much more. It's made everything way more flexible. And this is also kind of coupled with

00:59:51   with just some animation tweaks, applications,

00:59:54   they just open now, they don't flip around

00:59:58   on some kind of carousel every time you open it.

01:00:02   Little things like that have made me feel

01:00:04   much more productive on iOS 11.

01:00:09   My current hardware, I'm still perfectly fine with.

01:00:12   I have no burning need for new iPad hardware.

01:00:17   I use the 12.9 inch at home.

01:00:20   It's like my desktop, it's my home computer.

01:00:23   And then my 10.5 is for travel.

01:00:26   It's like whenever I'm out of the house,

01:00:27   it's like the equivalent of a laptop.

01:00:29   And both of those are working incredibly well.

01:00:32   I have no problems with them speed-wise.

01:00:34   Screens are incredible.

01:00:35   Like I don't feel the need.

01:00:37   I have been in that situation, right?

01:00:41   So when we were like 18 months

01:00:42   into the first 12.9 inch iPad,

01:00:45   which it went for before it was updated at all,

01:00:48   maybe even a little bit longer than that,

01:00:49   like I felt the need for it.

01:00:50   but these things are six months, seven, eight months old,

01:00:54   and I could go another year on them, I think,

01:00:57   before getting any hardware updates,

01:00:59   and I would be perfectly fine with that.

01:01:01   - I'm still using my original first generation

01:01:04   12.9 inch iPad Pro.

01:01:05   - I didn't know that.

01:01:07   - Yeah, it's just fine.

01:01:09   - Yeah, of course it is.

01:01:10   It's always a good machine, right?

01:01:12   But there were things that I wanted.

01:01:14   I wanted True Tone, stuff like that, right?

01:01:17   which because I had the 9.7 that had it and I was missing it on the bigger one and the

01:01:22   faster Touch ID and stuff like that. But none of those things were necessary, it was just

01:01:26   stuff that I wanted. I still use the Ample Smart Keyboard for both. This is purely on

01:01:34   the sense of versatility, its size and weight, and the fact that it uses the smart connector.

01:01:40   Those are the three things for me which make the smart keyboard keep winning. Like I think

01:01:45   about the bridge, I think about playing bridge keyboard roulette to see if I get a working

01:01:50   unit, but I don't want a Bluetooth keyboard and I don't want something that's going to

01:01:56   make everything so much heavier and stuff, so I go backwards and forwards on it and honestly

01:02:01   for me, the smart keyboard works and I know the positions that I have to sit in to make

01:02:07   it work on my lap, so much so that I don't even think about it anymore.

01:02:10   It's really good, I don't love using it on the lap. It's usable but it's not great. But

01:02:15   - Yeah, it's a good keyboard.

01:02:16   I greatly prefer the one, the 10.5,

01:02:19   then the 12.9 because it's just so bulky

01:02:22   on the 12.9 for obvious reasons,

01:02:24   but it's covering so much more ground there.

01:02:27   But yeah, it's a good keyboard.

01:02:28   - Just as the way a keyboard feels,

01:02:30   it is my favorite keyboard.

01:02:31   Like it feels great to me.

01:02:32   - The great disappointment of the iPad Pro smart connector

01:02:37   is that there are no really great alternatives

01:02:43   to the smart keyboard,

01:02:44   but it does help that the smart keyboard is really good.

01:02:47   Like that eases the pain of that a little bit.

01:02:49   - And I still use the Apple Pencil for note taking

01:02:56   and occasional UI navigation like during intensive tasks.

01:02:59   Like if I'm putting a bunch of stuff into a spreadsheet,

01:03:01   I'll grab the Apple Pencil and tap, tap, tap around.

01:03:03   Like I am as happy as I've ever been with my iPad usage.

01:03:08   I know there are people that go backwards and forwards,

01:03:11   but I couldn't be happier.

01:03:15   I could not be happier with it right now.

01:03:16   And I'm good.

01:03:19   I'm good for another year, I think, with everything.

01:03:22   You know, I just want some refinements to iOS 11

01:03:25   just to make sure that they work out some of the kinks

01:03:27   and some of the bugs, especially those in Files app.

01:03:29   And I'm good on hardware.

01:03:30   Like, I could go another year with exactly what I've got

01:03:33   and I think I'll be fine.

01:03:34   - All right, good.

01:03:37   Good check-in.

01:03:39   Do you want to just talk about Altos Odyssey real quick?

01:03:42   Yeah we should do it.

01:03:43   It's such a good game.

01:03:44   It is great.

01:03:46   So I, there is a, we did a review of the game on remaster, it was a video game podcast that

01:03:53   I do on relay FM if you're interested, but I know that you were a big fan of Altos adventure.

01:04:00   So I wanted to see what your feelings are about Altos Odyssey, like did it fulfil what

01:04:07   what you were looking for out of the application.

01:04:10   Did it surprise you in any ways?

01:04:12   Is it something that you're sucked into

01:04:16   in the same way that you were the first time around?

01:04:19   - Yes, basically yes.

01:04:21   It is, what I love about "Alto's Odyssey" is that,

01:04:24   first off, "Alto's Adventure,"

01:04:25   one of the greatest games for iOS.

01:04:29   I played on the iPad, but one of the great games for iOS.

01:04:31   I was playing, I started playing "Alto's Odyssey"

01:04:33   and I realized this is what a AAA iOS game looks like.

01:04:38   Like this is the real stuff.

01:04:40   This is the real stuff.

01:04:41   It is a great follow-up in that I can use my skills

01:04:46   gleaned in playing lots of Alta's adventure.

01:04:49   And yet it is, so that's where I start from.

01:04:54   And then it adds other dimensions.

01:04:57   So because this one is set in a desert landscape

01:05:00   instead of in a snow landscape. It's got different graphics. The

01:05:07   sound is beautiful, the graphics are beautiful, the terrain is far more

01:05:11   varied than it was in Alto's Adventure. There are gameplay modifications, there

01:05:16   are improvements to existing gameplay where they took things that weren't

01:05:19   great like the feather and replace them with new functionality that's different

01:05:23   but better. And there are also lots of extra quirks to gameplay involving

01:05:30   things like the balloons, there are different types of like the vine runs

01:05:35   that you can go on that behave differently. There are the

01:05:42   wall riding is a completely different mechanic. Water and how the water

01:05:47   affects your combos and stuff like that. Yeah so there's a lot in

01:05:53   here so it rewards the existing Altos Adventure user. It doesn't feel, it feels

01:05:59   familiar but doesn't feel like a retread which is a tough line to walk because if

01:06:03   you like with any sequel to anything if you make it too much like the original

01:06:07   like the Hunger Games sequel not to pick on that but that's a good example of like

01:06:12   a lot of a lot of books are like this which like our people like that book I'm

01:06:15   gonna write that book again and they'll buy it again and like the second book in

01:06:18   the Hunger Games sequence sequence was like that where it's like how do we get

01:06:21   them to play the Hunger Games again

01:06:23   let's do that and you see that a lot right and a truly effective sequel the

01:06:27   most effective sequel is one where it's familiar and it's you love it for the

01:06:33   reasons you love the original but then it transcends it it goes further and

01:06:36   that is something that Altos Odyssey really does do well which I was very

01:06:40   impressed by because I was worried it was going to be Altos adventure with a

01:06:43   couple minor tweaks and some new graphics and it is those things and more

01:06:47   it took everything that was good about the last game and then made it better

01:06:52   right which is like everything everything is better in this game after

01:06:56   about 10 minutes a phrase popped into my head which I completely stand by that

01:07:00   Altos Odyssey is the gold standard of iOS games like I think it may be the

01:07:07   best iOS game ever made like it is perfect in every way an iOS game can be

01:07:13   I don't think it works very well in other places like I can't I mean I don't

01:07:19   think I would enjoy this on the switch for example because it's not what it's

01:07:22   about like the direct contact with the screen is what makes this game perfect. It was designed

01:07:29   for that. The tap ticks on the iPhone are incredible but it's great to play on all devices

01:07:33   like it's easy I find to play on the iPad. Yeah pick a screen you can kind of observe

01:07:38   the environment more. The music you hear this like one track I don't know how long it is

01:07:43   but you hear it over and over again doesn't get old right because it's a beautiful piece

01:07:46   of music. The graphics are incredible that they've done so much more with light in this

01:07:51   game which I really like I love the lighting effects it is improved in every

01:07:55   single way but without being a retread as you say like I said this in remaster

01:08:01   I say here too like a good comparison for me is monument valley monument

01:08:07   valley 2 I kind of got bored of halfway through like and I loved monument valley

01:08:13   but the second one for whatever reason it didn't it just didn't really feel

01:08:20   it was adapting in the same way. It felt like it was just making like a bigger, more difficult

01:08:24   version of the first game. Yeah, it was. That's how I would say it's like more levels of Monument

01:08:29   Valley is what it is. Whereas Altos Adventure is not quite more levels of Altos Odyssey. It's got,

01:08:34   because there's enough other stuff going on in there, it is Altos Adventure plus this sort of new

01:08:41   thing that changes the game. Yeah. So yeah, no, it's very good. I highly recommend it. It is,

01:08:47   I mean, you said it's the gold standard. I said this is what a AAA game for iOS looks

01:08:51   like where it's like this is the stuff. This is showing off the platform. This is the best

01:08:57   stuff. It's great.

01:08:58   Yeah. It is as good as a game on iOS can get. Like that's what they've gone and done, which

01:09:05   is...

01:09:06   I think so.

01:09:07   You know, that's because this is a studio that understands iOS. Like it's where they

01:09:12   came from. It's where their bread and butter is, right? Like that's it for them. Like they

01:09:17   understand it. This is their thing. And I'm excited to see some of the other games that

01:09:21   are coming out of this studio. Built by Snowman, it's got a bunch of games on the way including

01:09:26   a skateboarding game called Skate City that I'm really excited about. They definitely

01:09:33   want to keep an eye on really really cool stuff.

01:09:36   Okay, so should we move into Ask Upgrade? Let's do it. Today's episode and today's Ask

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01:11:32   You tell them from the upgrade podcast.

01:11:34   Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show.

01:11:37   is freshbooks.com/upgrade.

01:11:39   So our first question this week in #AskUpgrade

01:11:43   comes from Rajiv.

01:11:44   Rajiv wants to know, "Jason, do you use any of the

01:11:47   colorblind settings in accessibility in iOS?"

01:11:51   - I don't.

01:11:53   That's the short version of that.

01:11:56   - Have you tried them?

01:11:57   - I tried them, it makes everything look really weird.

01:11:59   I don't have a problem differentiating stuff enough

01:12:03   for that to be something that I need to turn on.

01:12:05   So I turned it on and I was like, whoa,

01:12:06   this is really strange and makes everything look strange.

01:12:10   And maybe that's, you know, I don't know.

01:12:12   - Maybe it gave you the colors, right?

01:12:14   But it's like you can't conceive them.

01:12:15   - Maybe it gave me the colors.

01:12:17   I don't want to live in your color world.

01:12:20   It's no, it's yeah, no, it wasn't necessary for me.

01:12:23   It's most of the stuff that I notice is

01:12:26   sometimes there are games that have,

01:12:28   actually during the Olympics,

01:12:29   they had done the finger skating.

01:12:30   They had these little dots that would be like

01:12:33   yellow under review, green means that they completed

01:12:36   to the whatever properly and red was that they failed at it.

01:12:39   And a little tiny dot that you need to know

01:12:41   whether it's red or green.

01:12:43   (laughing)

01:12:44   Yeah, I can't do that.

01:12:45   That one's hard, but it rarely happens on iOS.

01:12:48   Usually there are games, but they, you know,

01:12:50   a lot of those games have a colorblind mode

01:12:53   where they change the colors

01:12:54   or they do something else to vary it

01:12:56   or they put symbols in them.

01:12:57   - Change shapes and stuff like that.

01:12:58   - Yeah, yeah, and there's usually something like that.

01:13:00   Whereas the colorblindness accessibility settings

01:13:03   seem to actually like alter the color palette that's shown on the screen and it just seems

01:13:07   strange to me and it's not for me it's not necessary I'm not quite sure who it's for

01:13:13   but I turned it off after trying that briefly yeah.

01:13:16   I think especially video games I see a lot of video games really trying hard to cater

01:13:21   to color blindness which I think is really cool.

01:13:24   Yeah you can't I mean that's the bottom line is like if you've got there was what was the

01:13:27   game I think was Trism for the an early

01:13:30   iOS game where you have to match items

01:13:33   by color and they had a couple of colors

01:13:37   that were very close for me that I had

01:13:40   a very hard time differentiating and it

01:13:42   made that game impossible to play

01:13:43   because I'd be like "aha I'll go here"

01:13:45   "oh no those aren't the same" right and I

01:13:48   think they added a colorblind mode later

01:13:50   on but it's just one of those things

01:13:51   that if you don't have a colorblind

01:13:52   person you don't think about it and so

01:13:56   So, you know, it's good that I think most games have learned you don't want to differentiate

01:14:02   by color like that or if you do, you want to offer like an alternate view where the

01:14:07   colors are different so that they spread out or that there's a shape or something.

01:14:12   Jay wants to know, "Are there any iOS apps that can turn an old iOS device into a HomeKit

01:14:17   camera?"

01:14:18   Now, the only option that I have for you here, there's an app that Federico has used called

01:14:23   ManyThing which can turn an iOS device into a camera but it doesn't have HomeKit support.

01:14:29   But it does some of what you want but not the whole thing. So if you have an old iOS

01:14:34   device that you want to turn into a camera, ManyThing can do it but you have to use the

01:14:37   ManyThing app to set up notifications and that's how you'd go into view it but it's

01:14:44   not HomeKit.

01:14:45   Interesting. I don't have anything to add other than Steve Trout and Smith, hacker extraordinaire

01:14:55   in terms of like digging through the internals of iOS especially. He went down a path, I

01:15:02   looked it up when I saw this question and decided that the cheapest way to do a HomeKit

01:15:10   camera is to buy a $45 Raspberry Pi Zero W with camera module running Homebridge, and

01:15:20   at that point it's a HomeKit camera. And so if you are feeling like you want to build

01:15:26   something yourself a little bit, that for $45 all in, Steve Trotton Smith says, you

01:15:32   you can get a homekit camera. That's another thing to look for if you're really into finding

01:15:42   a way to do relatively cheap homekit cameras.

01:15:45   Edith - Jonah has asked "How do you deal with text selection on the iPad when writing?

01:15:50   Do you frequently use copy and paste or do you drag things around?"

01:15:54   What do you do?

01:15:58   I do both but it's way more copy and paste because a lot of the time with the drag and

01:16:05   drop it's like I like drag and drop a lot but I've already selected the text so I may

01:16:13   as well just copy it and this is because a lot of times when I'm copying and pasting

01:16:20   Sometimes I'm copying into two different locations.

01:16:23   So drag and drop doesn't help because I have to do it all over again multiple

01:16:28   times. And the other, like sometimes I just,

01:16:31   I just need to just copy it.

01:16:34   Like it's, I don't need drag and drop just for like one sentence or like a word.

01:16:39   I use way more copy and paste and drag and drop for text.

01:16:42   I use drag and drop a lot for other things,

01:16:44   like for moving files around and stuff like that and using moving images.

01:16:48   But for text, I'm way more in the getting the grabbies and moving them around and just

01:16:54   hitting the copy command.

01:16:56   I would just say as an addendum to this, if you use iOS a lot, you have to get used to

01:17:00   reaching out with your hands if you're going to be using a lot of copy and paste.

01:17:03   This is just the way that it is because keyboard selection isn't amazing or sometimes just

01:17:08   straight up doesn't work very well.

01:17:10   And this is where the desire for people like me and you for a mouse would come in is because

01:17:17   we'd like to be able to have more refined text selection.

01:17:22   But yeah, mostly I'm copy and paste.

01:17:24   - The cursor's already there, just do that.

01:17:25   But anyway, so similar to you, I use both,

01:17:28   it depends on the context.

01:17:29   One of the things that I do when I'm doing like this show,

01:17:32   I post a link to this show on Six Colors.

01:17:35   And what I will do is I actually put my,

01:17:37   the Six Colors CMS in split screen

01:17:40   with the upgrade show page.

01:17:43   And I actually use drag and drop for that.

01:17:44   I grab the title bar and drag it into the URL field. I grab the

01:17:49   description of the show and I drag it into the description on the other

01:17:53   web page. I grab the title and I drag it. That's all drag and drop. So that's an

01:17:56   example of it. If I'm using the keyboard, I am more inclined

01:18:05   to copy and paste, but I do use both and I haven't really thought about

01:18:09   what all the different contexts are. A lot of my copy and paste is sort of...

01:18:16   if you can select something and then drag it and you've got to go

01:18:19   through scrolling and moving and stuff like that, it's easier to just cut

01:18:23   it and then paste it. But if you've got something where it's fairly

01:18:26   straightforward to just move... In the case of this show on six colors, I

01:18:31   have to copy four or five different blocks of content, and so drag and drop is

01:18:38   actually way better because I don't want to go back and forth, back and forth, and

01:18:41   back and forth. And if I was doing... I tend not to do huge amounts of text.

01:18:47   Like, it is a number. So like, let's talk about invoicing. One of the big things

01:18:52   for me is send an invoice and then drop it into two spreadsheets that we have.

01:18:56   Well, a system and a spreadsheet. Drag and drop's not good for me there. It's a

01:19:00   five-digit number, right? Like, I'll just copy the number and then paste and

01:19:04   and paste. Drag and drop would be too much work in that.

01:19:08   But URLs are great because URLs are actually hard to select in Safari on iOS especially.

01:19:14   They're almost impossible to select. So frustrating. But you can just drag right out of the bar

01:19:19   and drop it somewhere and the URL comes with and it's great. So I use that all the time

01:19:24   because it's actually way easier to drag and drop than select. And your example is the

01:19:29   exact opposite where it's way easier to just select that thing and copy it.

01:19:33   - Yeah, exactly.

01:19:35   So it differs, right?

01:19:36   But just for the majority of text stuff that I'm doing,

01:19:39   drag and drop is a little bit too aggressive.

01:19:41   Like it's more than I need for some text.

01:19:44   - Yeah, and since Jenna was asking about writing,

01:19:47   I mostly do text selection in a text editor

01:19:49   with arrow keys and the shift key,

01:19:52   and I copy and paste. - I do a lot of that too.

01:19:53   - And I do that because I don't wanna take my hands

01:19:56   off the keyboard, and so I just do all of it.

01:19:58   And if I can do my text selection and copy and paste,

01:20:02   and maybe I reach up and scroll down to another area and then tap and then I paste it in but

01:20:07   you know I most of my writing behavior I just want to keep my hands on the keyboard and

01:20:12   not break stride in that way and so I'll just use I'll select and copy or cut and paste.

01:20:20   All right Lucas asked do you think that the next version of the regular 9.7 inch iPad

01:20:25   so the cheap one the kind of $329 iPad will get a HDR display? I don't by the way use

01:20:31   my I'm gonna throw out there yeah I would say I would say no to just because

01:20:37   they're gonna keep this iPad as cheap as they can for a long time yeah yep and

01:20:41   and put the keep a high-end features in the iPad Pro so because that is a real

01:20:46   selling price for the 10.5 right like this beautiful screen don't take away a

01:20:51   selling point for the iPad Pro like yep even if you could do it I mean if it was

01:20:56   up to me even if I could do it I probably wouldn't do it because you've

01:20:59   got to have a differentiation in the line. You've got to have that, right? So that would

01:21:04   make sense to me. And then as a secondary question, which I like to put these two together,

01:21:09   Kyle wants to know, "Can you tell me what HDR is? I've heard people say this is a big

01:21:14   feature in TVs, but I'm not really hearing anybody talk about why and I don't know anything

01:21:19   about it." So Jason, what is HDR?

01:21:21   So dynamic range is the concept of like how, in this case, how bright and how dark can a display go.

01:21:32   And so, like, HDR allows more definition between darkness and brightness.

01:21:40   And as a result, if you think about it, like, imagine you're a regular TV,

01:21:45   and then imagine your TV being able to have the blacks be blacker and the whites be whiter,

01:21:51   and everything can go from bright to dark. And that has to do with backlighting on LCD TVs,

01:21:59   having different backlighting zones, but it's more information. HDR means there's more information about

01:22:06   brightness, luminance, I think there's a whole bunch of stuff that's wrapped in there.

01:22:12   And the result is you end up with a picture that is not just more pixels, but what you're seeing

01:22:18   is over a wider range. It's hard to describe, but if you've seen an HDR picture,

01:22:27   especially if you've seen it on something like an OLED, which has kind of amazing

01:22:32   black range, but you're going to see that it's more dynamic. I hate to say it, there's more

01:22:38   dynamic range. The palette is greater at that point. And my words fail me. I mean, it really

01:22:47   is one of those things where it's a way to improve picture quality that is not based on adding more

01:22:54   pixels, but just having the display be more capable of a wider range of image. I'm trying

01:23:02   to simplify it, and I'm sure somebody will write in and say, "Well, technically you should have

01:23:05   use this word and that's probably true but that's the idea is that it's not

01:23:10   we've been talking about picture quality and it's been all about like going from

01:23:14   SD to HD from 720 to 1080 to 4k and HDR is this other piece of it where you can

01:23:22   have a 4k you have a non 4k HDR and you can have a 4k non HDR but you put them

01:23:28   together and that that's an even better combination because you've got lots of

01:23:32   pixels and you've got a display that is capable of showing, because that's the key is it's

01:23:39   not just decoding the HDR data, it's having display that's capable of displaying a wide

01:23:48   dynamic range from darkness to brightness.

01:23:52   The easiest way that I think I could describe it would just be like, "more colours that

01:23:58   look better. That's as much as I can do. Your description is way better.

01:24:04   Well, it looks nicer. It looks nicer and darkness and lightness is

01:24:09   like a big part of it where it's just like you have the ability to display a lot of TVs

01:24:14   that are not HDR. You'll see that if something's really bright, they ramp up all the backlighting.

01:24:19   And if something's really dark, they try to crank down the backlighting. But if you've

01:24:23   got an image that is like super dark here and then super bright here a lot of

01:24:28   those displays are like you know well I can't do that like the darks only going

01:24:31   to be kind of dark and the lights only going to be kind of light because I have

01:24:35   to choose and with HDR they don't have to choose they can make the dark stark

01:24:39   and the brights bright and the display is capable of showing all that

01:24:43   information it's it's yeah that's that's what it is I'll say I just want to give

01:24:50   a shout out to a friend of mine, a fantastic YouTube creator called Austin Evans, his name

01:24:54   is Austin Evans, and every now and then he does a HDR video on his YouTube channel and

01:25:01   they look incredible.

01:25:02   So he just did a video, he got hands on with a Samsung Galaxy S9 and he did a HDR video,

01:25:10   it looks awesome.

01:25:11   Like if you watch it on iPads, it's probably the best place to see it because the HDR,

01:25:17   I don't know if the YouTube app does HDR on the Apple TV.

01:25:20   I can't remember.

01:25:21   Obviously I know it doesn't do 4K,

01:25:23   but I don't know about the HDR support.

01:25:25   But yeah, it looks really good on the iPad.

01:25:30   It looks really, really good.

01:25:31   So we can go check it out there.

01:25:33   So yeah, it looks really nice.

01:25:34   I like the HDR look.

01:25:36   If you want to see an example of something that is free,

01:25:38   right, that is not a movie,

01:25:40   and you want to see what it looks like,

01:25:41   well, that's the place that you can go and do that.

01:25:45   All right, if you want to catch our show notes for this week,

01:25:48   head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/182.

01:25:53   I want to take a moment to thank our sponsors again,

01:25:55   Anchor, FreshBooks, and Mac Walden.

01:25:57   And mentioning Anchor, don't forget to check out Subnet.

01:26:00   It's really cool, Stephen Hackett is hosting it.

01:26:02   It's just like, I like listening to it

01:26:04   when I'm making my coffee in the morning.

01:26:05   I just get to hear Stephen tell me a couple of headlines

01:26:08   and I'm prepared for the day, it's really cool.

01:26:10   So you can go check that out at relay.fm/subnet.

01:26:13   Or you can just ask your smart speaker

01:26:15   and get it set up with your smart speaker.

01:26:16   It's kind of cool that we've got that going now.

01:26:18   If you want to find Jason's work online,

01:26:19   you can go to sixthcolors.com.

01:26:21   You can go to the incomparable.com

01:26:23   or you can head on over to relay.fm/shows

01:26:28   where you'll find a bunch of shows that Jason does

01:26:29   and a bunch of shows that I do as well.

01:26:32   Jason is @jasonel on Twitter.

01:26:33   I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:26:36   And we'll be back next week.

01:26:37   Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:26:40   - Goodbye, everybody.

01:26:41   (upbeat music)

01:26:43   [ Music ]