Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 231.

00:00:13 ◼   ► It is made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Pingdom, Luna Display, and Care/Of.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I'm your host, Steven Hackett, and this is an odd episode,

00:00:21 ◼   ► so let me introduce to you my friend and yours,

00:00:25 ◼   ► Michael Hurley.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - The year of Myke has officially begun.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Now that I've got justice, the justice that I deserved, and here I am, as introduced first.

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm now going to begin my 90 minute monologue as part of my introduction that I prepared

00:00:41 ◼   ► this week.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I was born in 1988 in a small town... no, it's done now.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Please continue.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I will listen to this.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I don't have it prepared.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I'll prepare it for my next episode.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And we have Federico here as well.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Hi.

00:00:59 ◼   ► it. Every number is an even number because 231 divided by 2 is 115.5.

00:01:06 ◼   ► I think you understand even numbers. He cheated in math class, remember?

00:01:12 ◼   ► I don't know. But yeah, it's fine, you know, this new rule system.

00:01:21 ◼   ► It's fair.

00:01:23 ◼   ► If Myke wanted it, so, you know, he's happy.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It's fair is what it is. Fair. Fair is such an overused term. But yeah, I will accept it.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Okay, I'm glad we got that cleared up. We have a bunch of follow up this week. It goes on and on

00:01:43 ◼   ► and on. The Apple Enterprise certificate system is still completely broken in every way. 9to5 Mac

00:01:51 ◼   ► reported this on last week. The Verge reported on it, I think yesterday or today, like shocked

00:01:56 ◼   ► that people install hacked apps on their phone.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I guess the moral of the story is,

00:02:01 ◼   ► this is like still super, super broken.

00:02:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, we've sort of hinted at the fact

00:02:08 ◼   ► that there have been for several years now

00:02:12 ◼   ► like these third-party app stores

00:02:15 ◼   ► that allowed you to install.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I mentioned tweaked versions of apps

00:02:20 ◼   ► like Spotify without ads or Instagram

00:02:24 ◼   ► with certain enhancements that were possible only on general broken devices.

00:02:28 ◼   ► And I think Bloomberg also did a report on this and they mentioned the service that I was thinking of.

00:02:34 ◼   ► It's called TweakBox and it's part of this series of third-party alternative

00:02:40 ◼   ► quote-unquote app stores that allow you to install either modified versions of apps or just hacked,

00:02:47 ◼   ► like the cracked copies of apps.

00:02:50 ◼   ► This reminds me of the fact that years ago before,

00:02:55 ◼   ► you know, when jailbreaking on iPhone used to be more of a common thing,

00:02:59 ◼   ► like, you guys remember there were like tools that you could download

00:03:04 ◼   ► on your computer and they would jailbreak your device with one click.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I jail broke some stuff in the past, like iPod touches and stuff.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah. And I would often like when jailbreaking was easy,

00:03:14 ◼   ► I would often find on my friends' home screens

00:03:17 ◼   ► this third-party app store that I don't think it exists anymore. It was called Installus,

00:03:25 ◼   ► and it was a way to install pirated copies of games. And my friends were crazy for this

00:03:32 ◼   ► illegal app store, but it used to be so common. And it feels like, to an extent, this enterprise

00:03:38 ◼   ► certificate deal is sort of like the new jailbreaking for a lot of people. It's a way to get around

00:03:45 ◼   ► the App Store and paying for software, using in this case, it's even more

00:03:51 ◼   ► -egregious. -So easy to do.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Because it's an officially sanctioned tool that is available on iOS.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I mean, clearly at this point, right, we're talking about this every week

00:04:04 ◼   ► because TechCrunch hit on an absolute goldmine of reporting.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Right. So like everyone's trying to write their piece now about the

00:04:15 ◼   ► enterprise saying, and I'm not saying that it's not valid, especially because

00:04:17 ◼   ► new things keep coming out.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But like, this feels like a story that's going to keep popping up for a little

00:04:23 ◼   ► while. And/or even if it goes away, everyone now has like an opinion

00:04:28 ◼   ► about this enterprise stuff.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And it means probably more people are going to try and get hacked apps because

00:04:34 ◼   ► now they might know that it exists when they didn't before.

00:04:37 ◼   ► But every now and then you just see these things pop up.

00:04:40 ◼   ► They're like, someone gets this big story and then people will start digging into

00:04:43 ◼   ► Like, as you imagine in newsrooms across the globe, what is our story about the Enterprise

00:04:50 ◼   ► certificates, right?

00:04:51 ◼   ► And then someone has to try and write a story about it, which is why it's now all over the

00:04:56 ◼   ► place.

00:04:57 ◼   ► And they just, these stories just keep popping up.

00:05:01 ◼   ► It still feels like our conversation from last week holds up that there's some sort

00:05:05 ◼   ► of reckoning coming for this system.

00:05:08 ◼   ► It's gonna go through some changes.

00:05:11 ◼   ► We also spoke about the report concerning Apple's upcoming

00:05:16 ◼   ► texture-powered news magazine website thing

00:05:20 ◼   ► through Apple News.

00:05:21 ◼   ► The story was that Apple had asked publishers

00:05:24 ◼   ► for 50% of the revenue generated

00:05:27 ◼   ► through the subscriptions in Apple News.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And after we recorded, Recode had an article

00:05:32 ◼   ► of putting some more detail into this.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And basically the headline here is that

00:05:38 ◼   ► Apple does actually have potentially quite a few organizations and publications signed

00:05:43 ◼   ► up for this because they would rather have a small percentage of a big number than a

00:05:47 ◼   ► big chunk of a small number.

00:05:50 ◼   ► When as ever make it up in scale, that's never failed, but it seems like some people are

00:05:55 ◼   ► going to go for it with this.

00:05:57 ◼   ► This may not be quite as dire as it seemed when they launched this thing.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I think there will be more people there than we anticipated.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's a good set of points that Peter Kafka makes in this article, but I think

00:06:13 ◼   ► even he says that you're still not going to get the huge publishers, right? It's very

00:06:18 ◼   ► unlikely that the big newspapers are going to go for this, but as we were talking about

00:06:22 ◼   ► before, this is clearly a method for magazines, websites, newspapers that were not making

00:06:29 ◼   ► a ton of money before to make some, but that still kind of leaves it in a situation of

00:06:35 ◼   ► is the service going to be compelling enough? Is it going to have enough of what people

00:06:39 ◼   ► want to read that they would pay money for it? That I think remains to be seen and we'll

00:06:46 ◼   ► find out next month.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and it feels like something that will be more popular among publishers that don't

00:06:56 ◼   ► have an important presence on the web or don't have maybe the resources to commit to building

00:07:04 ◼   ► up a website with subscriptions and paywalls, like if you're a magazine and you sort of

00:07:08 ◼   ► have a website but it's not this great experience and you don't have paywalls on the web, then

00:07:15 ◼   ► I guess using Apple News and embracing Apple News on Apple's terms makes sense. But again,

00:07:20 ◼   ► I remain convinced, I agree with Myke, if you're the Wall Street Journal all the times,

00:07:25 ◼   ► would you give up the revenue that you can get on your website because you have the whole

00:07:30 ◼   ► infrastructure already in place. So I guess we'll see the likes of like sport magazines

00:07:35 ◼   ► or other publications that don't have such a strong web component. I want to see if there

00:07:43 ◼   ► will be any surprises, like maybe actually the times will be on Apple News. I strongly

00:07:48 ◼   ► doubt it myself, but we'll see what happens.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I mean, we could be a month away from this, right, if that March event is really on the

00:07:57 ◼   ► books.

00:07:59 ◼   ► We do need to talk about maybe the highlight of last week of Team San Jose.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Remember this?

00:08:05 ◼   ► This is how MacRumors discovered when WBC may be, and we thought that Team San Jose

00:08:12 ◼   ► was a bad codename.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Well, it turns out it's just a regular bad name.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So listen to Robert Synthesin.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Team San Jose is the name of the city's convention and visitor bureau that is in charge of booking

00:08:26 ◼   ► these events and publicizing them.

00:08:28 ◼   ► They apparently run the city-owned venues like the convention center.

00:08:32 ◼   ► So not a code name, just sort of a weird marketing brand for the city of San Jose that they should

00:08:38 ◼   ► workshop more.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But they even have a website.

00:08:41 ◼   ► You can go read it.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It's Team San Jose, all the way I guess.

00:08:46 ◼   ► But this makes it kind of worse, right?

00:08:48 ◼   ► Because this wasn't Apple messing up.

00:08:51 ◼   ► This was Apple having to rely on a company

00:08:53 ◼   ► because they clearly are not allowed to book these venues

00:08:57 ◼   ► without the involvement of Team San Jose.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Which is actually like-- they are like a public-private thing.

00:09:03 ◼   ► So relying on the city or something partially funded

00:09:06 ◼   ► by the city is not great.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I just wanted to let you know that Team San Jose has DMAP

00:09:11 ◼   ► certification, which is the destination marketing

00:09:14 ◼   ► accreditation program, DMAP.

00:09:16 ◼   ► an independent international body defining quality and performance issues in destination marketing

00:09:20 ◼   ► and recognizing DMOs that meet or exceed industry standards.

00:09:25 ◼   ► So you got the sweet, sweet DMAP program approved, you know, Team San Jose all the way.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Good job.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I was thinking about not attending San Jose this year if they didn't have DMAP certification by now, so I'm pleased.

00:09:37 ◼   ► No, no, they do, they have DMAP, so it's safe to go.

00:09:40 ◼   ► If you're a DMAP aficionado, it's safe to go.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I like how they explain what DMAP means, but then they jump into DMO, which is destination

00:09:52 ◼   ► marketing organization, but they don't explain that until later.

00:09:56 ◼   ► There's also DMAI, which is when AI gets involved.

00:10:02 ◼   ► That's the future of the DM programs.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And they explain that, but then they don't use it again.

00:10:08 ◼   ► This is a very sloppy use of acronyms, San Jose.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Because people that don't know the acronyms shouldn't really be on this website. Let's

00:10:17 ◼   ► be honest. It's not meant for us.

00:10:19 ◼   ► It's just poor use of acronyms. You gotta use it on first reference and then you don't

00:10:23 ◼   ► give it if you don't ever use it again. I just don't.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Also I wanted to let you know that there's a shop San Jose, which is another thing that

00:10:31 ◼   ► exists. You can buy t-shirts with the San Jose logo. Hats. Yeah. Also stickers.

00:10:38 ◼   ► some cool San Jose swag? Be the first to get the newest San Jose branded t-shirts, hoodies,

00:10:44 ◼   ► hats and more. I feel like we should all buy these and we can roll into San Jose.

00:10:47 ◼   ► You should put a San Jose sticker on your iPad, Myke.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Okay. I don't think I want to pay for the shipping.

00:10:54 ◼   ► Well, maybe you can pick it up in person at the Team San Jose office.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Maybe I can. Maybe they have a big, big gift shop or something. I have a selection of follow-up

00:11:05 ◼   ► items that I would like to submit to the group.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Oh boy. Would you say a menu of follow up items?

00:11:11 ◼   ► Yeah. So I'll tell you the more and then you can like choose what your favorite one.

00:11:14 ◼   ► OK. OK.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I would like to thank everybody who tried to help me on my Sonos related

00:11:19 ◼   ► record player quest.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I've got lots of suggestions.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Pretty much every suggestion ended with what app shall I use?

00:11:26 ◼   ► I was getting lots of people just plug it into an iPod touch.

00:11:29 ◼   ► But the problem is always, OK, when I get there,

00:11:32 ◼   ► how do I get the audio from the iPod touch from an audio in

00:11:37 ◼   ► to the HomePod. And there's basically, and then there's like a bunch of other solutions,

00:11:42 ◼   ► none of them are what I want. You can't leave that hanging, because then you're going to get

00:11:45 ◼   ► feedback about that again. The answer was leave GarageBand running on the iPod touch,

00:11:50 ◼   ► monitoring the input. That is untenable. It's untenable. That is an untenable solution. I'm

00:11:55 ◼   ► not saying that it is I'm just saying that you can't leave that hanging or you're going to hear

00:11:58 ◼   ► about GarageBand for another seven days. To be honest, I've gotten so many pieces of feedback

00:12:04 ◼   ► about this, I'd completely forgotten about the GarageBand one because that was one of

00:12:08 ◼   ► the first and then I spent the last week of my life reading these solutions.

00:12:13 ◼   ► None of them, I genuinely am grateful for people trying to help me.

00:12:18 ◼   ► This is nobody's fault except the technology that underlies everything.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I've decided though that I will not be progressing any technology-focused route to solve this

00:12:27 ◼   ► problem and I'm just going to buy some speakers.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I like the people that just wrote into me, including Marco Arment, and just said,

00:12:35 ◼   ► "You're not going to be happy with any of this.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And by doing something technological, you're kind of ruining part of what makes a record player so much fun to own.

00:12:44 ◼   ► So I'm going to go with the speaker root.

00:12:46 ◼   ► It was a nice try, but that's that.

00:12:48 ◼   ► That is done. That this door has been closed.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I have been given the Tichi curse.

00:12:55 ◼   ► My AirPods are now only getting about 60 to 90 minutes of battery life before I hear the sound.

00:13:00 ◼   ► This was not happening a couple of weeks ago before we started talking about this, but now they are.

00:13:06 ◼   ► I was on a phone call yesterday, 45 minutes in, whatever that little noise is, so that's unfortunate.

00:13:12 ◼   ► So it's happening to me now too. I am a devout Gboard user, have been for a long time, I absolutely love it.

00:13:19 ◼   ► The autocorrect works well for me, I like the swipe typing and all the emoji search and stuff is brilliant.

00:13:24 ◼   ► They just added haptic feedback when you tap on keys.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I love this. You don't have to.

00:13:31 ◼   ► It's the thing you have to turn on. It's off by default.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I turned it on and I really, really like it.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I like the way it feels.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So that's something it's just another great feature that Gboard has.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And finally, I scratched my screen protector.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Oh, your paper thing?

00:13:47 ◼   ► Yeah, like I got like a deep like gouge into it.

00:13:50 ◼   ► What did you do?

00:13:52 ◼   ► I don't know what I did,

00:13:54 ◼   ► But it's scratched. At this point, I'm just trying to hang on.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I still like the way it feels, but I'm getting more frustrated with it.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I don't know how much longer it's going to live, but I just wanted to let you know that I scratched the screen protector,

00:14:07 ◼   ► just because that's kind of a funny thing.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Maybe you were upset.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Maybe you were upset at the screen protector and you wanted to hurt it.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that might have been what it was.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Do you know what would be really

00:14:18 ◼   ► rewarding for all of us?

00:14:21 ◼   ► just as a connected family.

00:14:23 ◼   ► If you just got your iPad and took it off on the microphone

00:14:27 ◼   ► so we could hear it.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - I knew you were gonna suggest this.

00:14:29 ◼   ► - It's a really nice sound.

00:14:31 ◼   ► - It's not in the same room.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - Well, we can wait.

00:14:33 ◼   ► I can edit it in elevator music.

00:14:35 ◼   ► - When we come back from the ad break,

00:14:38 ◼   ► we can all have an ASMR treat.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:14:41 ◼   ► - So you go do that and I'll go get my iPad.

00:14:44 ◼   ► - Oh my God, okay.

00:14:46 ◼   ► - This episode of Connected is brought to you by Pingdom,

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00:16:09 ◼   ► - So, but before I do this, I just wanna say,

00:16:12 ◼   ► I will miss the way that this feels.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It does feel really good, but like it does ruin the screen.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Good bye paper.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Bye.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I have no idea if you're going to hear this, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Alright, you ready?

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yes.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Oh man, it's gone.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It sounded like thunder for a second.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Yeah, there was one point where I hit it against the microphone.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Oh, you guys, did you know that the 12.9 inch iPad has a really nice screen?

00:16:52 ◼   ► It's a retina display under there!

00:16:53 ◼   ► It looks so good, oh my god it looks so good, but you know what though, genuinely, I do

00:16:58 ◼   ► not like the way it feels.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Like it's just too grippy now.

00:17:02 ◼   ► You need some more finger grease on there to oil that baby up.

00:17:05 ◼   ► I guess that's probably what it is.

00:17:09 ◼   ► That's disgusting, Steven. My god!

00:17:13 ◼   ► Can I just say I've had this thing for like a second and it's already like a bunch of

00:17:19 ◼   ► just fingerprints all over it. That's the thing that I'm giving up.

00:17:22 ◼   ► I just clean my iPad off, you know, every once in a while and I think this is really nice.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I should put it in a glass case and never touch it again.

00:17:29 ◼   ► No, you just need a screen protector.

00:17:32 ◼   ► The trick is to never leave the display off so you never see the fingerprints.

00:17:37 ◼   ► That's the secret to your productivity.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Always keep it running.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Alright do we have to do this? Whatever it is, yes is the answer.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah you promised, you promised that you would talk about your phone situation.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Oh I see, oh I see what we're talking about.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I did promise. To recap, I bought an iPhone XS Max with y'all and many of our

00:18:03 ◼   ► listeners back when it whenever it came out in the fall and pretty good pretty

00:18:08 ◼   ► good time screen was nice battery life was amazing and then like a month ago I

00:18:14 ◼   ► said you know I should check out the iPhone XR it's the most popular iPhone I

00:18:17 ◼   ► want to kind of understand it as a device see what it's like compared to

00:18:20 ◼   ► the other things so I picked up a XR really liked it but as I discussed with

00:18:25 ◼   ► y'all the the camera was really what was gonna do it in for me long term the

00:18:31 ◼   ► The screen is great, the battery life is incredible.

00:18:33 ◼   ► I love the colors so much.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But I really like having that second camera.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Not necessarily for portrait photos,

00:18:41 ◼   ► but it's actually kind of surprising

00:18:43 ◼   ► once you pay attention, for me at least,

00:18:45 ◼   ► how often I would switch the zoom lens

00:18:46 ◼   ► to take a regular photo.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It's nice to punch in sometimes.

00:18:52 ◼   ► And I knew that in my inner self

00:18:57 ◼   ► that I would be frustrated not having that over time.

00:18:59 ◼   ► So the iPhone XR went back to the Apple Store.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Thank you Apple retail for having a nice return policy

00:19:05 ◼   ► and please don't catch on to the fact

00:19:06 ◼   ► that sometimes I use it to review your products.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Just keep that between us, listeners.

00:19:11 ◼   ► But the thing that I realized was that the XS Max

00:19:17 ◼   ► is beyond my upper size limit for phones.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I really like the plus size, I like the size of the X,

00:19:27 ◼   ► But sometimes I thought the X was a little small.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And the XR for me, honestly, is like the perfect size iPhone.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I really love that size.

00:19:36 ◼   ► But I picked the Max up again.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I was like, this is too big.

00:19:39 ◼   ► It's too much phone for me.

00:19:44 ◼   ► So while all this is going on with y'all,

00:19:46 ◼   ► I'm also having this conversation

00:19:47 ◼   ► with a family member who needs to buy a new iPhone

00:19:50 ◼   ► to replace a flip phone they were using.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Like, yes, I had a family member using a flip phone.

00:19:56 ◼   ► They wanted to buy an iPhone.

00:19:58 ◼   ► They really liked the idea of having something big,

00:20:01 ◼   ► because this person works out running around all day,

00:20:06 ◼   ► seeing clients and stuff.

00:20:07 ◼   ► So they use a MacBook Air, but they're like, well,

00:20:10 ◼   ► I could just do email and stuff on the phone.

00:20:11 ◼   ► If it was big enough, they're going to blow up the text size.

00:20:14 ◼   ► The Max was attractive to them, but they

00:20:17 ◼   ► didn't want to spend the whatever it is, $2,200

00:20:21 ◼   ► for an iPhone XS Max.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And so I cut a deal with that family member.

00:20:25 ◼   ► I said, I'll make you a deal on the max,

00:20:28 ◼   ► help you out, you get to where you need to be.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And I ended up with an iPhone XS.

00:20:36 ◼   ► It's right here in my hands,

00:20:39 ◼   ► and I have to say, I really love it.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I love the screen size, it's way more pocketable,

00:20:45 ◼   ► I can use it with one hand, unlike the max,

00:20:47 ◼   ► which was just like too big for my hands.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And so yeah, that's the end of my iPhone journey

00:20:55 ◼   ► for this year.

00:20:56 ◼   ► - For now.

00:20:58 ◼   ► For now.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I mean, I seem to recall that when we had the conversation

00:21:04 ◼   ► about the XR, I don't remember exactly what it was

00:21:07 ◼   ► that I predicted you would do,

00:21:08 ◼   ► but I don't think it's very far off

00:21:10 ◼   ► from what you ended up doing.

00:21:12 ◼   ► That you wouldn't be able to settle on anything.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And you didn't settle on anything.

00:21:16 ◼   ► You settled for neither the thing that you had

00:21:18 ◼   ► or the thing that you already owned.

00:21:19 ◼   ► you went for like a third option,

00:21:21 ◼   ► which was another new thing.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - It's the most Steven decision in that situation.

00:21:26 ◼   ► But anyways, I really like the size.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I will say though, the battery life is worse

00:21:31 ◼   ► on the smaller phone.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Especially coming from the XR to this,

00:21:34 ◼   ► the battery life is not stellar.

00:21:37 ◼   ► It's not impressive, so that's a bit of a bummer.

00:21:39 ◼   ► But other than all that, my family member's taken care of.

00:21:43 ◼   ► I've got a phone I like that I can use one-handed.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And that's the story.

00:21:49 ◼   ► I cannot even begin to imagine what you're gonna do when the new modular Mac Pro comes

00:21:54 ◼   ► out.

00:21:55 ◼   ► You're gonna try so many different displays.

00:21:58 ◼   ► I know what he's gonna do.

00:21:59 ◼   ► He's gonna buy that.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Yeah, but first he's going for one type of configuration, then he's gonna switch it to

00:22:06 ◼   ► another, then he's gonna switch displays, then it will tweak the amount of RAM that

00:22:10 ◼   ► goes into the computer.

00:22:11 ◼   ► It'll be like a six month thing, at least.

00:22:15 ◼   ► You're not wrong.

00:22:16 ◼   ► What would you describe as the cause for your undecisiveness, Steven?

00:22:25 ◼   ► Here's the thing. I'm actually quite decisive in a lot of areas of life. Just when it comes

00:22:33 ◼   ► to technology products. And not even technology products.

00:22:37 ◼   ► You're very decisive. You just make a lot of decisions.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Repeatedly. Over and over. In quick succession.

00:22:43 ◼   ► About the same things.

00:22:44 ◼   ► But you know, there's a lot in my life that I'm not this way about, but something about

00:22:50 ◼   ► laptops and phones just bounce around a bunch.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Anyways, but yes, the Mac Pro will be an endless playground for me, which I look forward to

00:23:00 ◼   ► greatly.

00:23:01 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is all sealed up, I can't do anything with this computer.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I can just look at it and love it, but its successor I will be able to take apart anytime

00:23:07 ◼   ► I want.

00:23:08 ◼   ► I remember though that this iMac Pro came with one of these stories.

00:23:17 ◼   ► That wasn't like it.

00:23:18 ◼   ► That was like a, if I remember rightly, again, beautiful Stephen Fashian, you were very much

00:23:24 ◼   ► like "I don't need one of those, I'm going to buy a refurbished iMac instead."

00:23:29 ◼   ► When they are announced.

00:23:30 ◼   ► No.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I'm going to buy a refurbished iMac because that's all the iMac I need and then like two

00:23:35 ◼   ► weeks later you got an iMac Pro.

00:23:37 ◼   ► pretty much what happened. Yep. So this is why I won. There are always good reasons though,

00:23:42 ◼   ► right? Like that iMac I bought was an i7 and the fan noise was ungodly and when you record podcasts

00:23:48 ◼   ► you can't deal with that. So beautiful, silent iMac Pro. But for some reason everybody else can see

00:23:54 ◼   ► these reasons ahead of you. Yeah that's what's really troubling. So maybe I just need to call

00:23:59 ◼   ► y'all before I purchase anything and we just talk to it. Anything. Yeah and I'll just tell you what

00:24:04 ◼   ► what to do every time.

00:24:05 ◼   ► - Could you be my life coach?

00:24:07 ◼   ► - Sure. - Okay.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Well, that's enough about me.

00:24:10 ◼   ► We have a lot of stuff to talk about

00:24:12 ◼   ► because the floodgates have opened on 2019

00:24:17 ◼   ► and beyond Apple rumors.

00:24:20 ◼   ► It's, there's like every time I open a web,

00:24:24 ◼   ► the web browser, there's more Apple rumors to talk about.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And I thought we could start with the most recent.

00:24:30 ◼   ► It's being like today on Wednesday

00:24:32 ◼   ► and we work our way back to the stuff earlier this week.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So we all woke up this morning

00:24:37 ◼   ► to an article by Mark Gurman.

00:24:41 ◼   ► As a meta comment, I will say this is written only by him,

00:24:45 ◼   ► and it's way more clear than the stuff

00:24:47 ◼   ► he has to write with other people

00:24:48 ◼   ► that has lots of hedging and stuff.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Like, I read this article top to bottom,

00:24:52 ◼   ► I have problems with it, but it all made sense,

00:24:54 ◼   ► unlike some of his joint writing he does with other people,

00:24:57 ◼   ► which I don't blame Mark for.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I'm sure he's got editors somewhere

00:25:00 ◼   ► to make him do that sort of stuff.

00:25:01 ◼   ► But to recap this if you haven't seen it,

00:25:03 ◼   ► Mark Gurman lays out a timeline for the rollout

00:25:09 ◼   ► of what he is still calling Marzipan,

00:25:11 ◼   ► which not everyone thinks that's the name, but whatever.

00:25:13 ◼   ► We're calling it that for lack of a better term.

00:25:16 ◼   ► So he's laying out the case that this is going to be

00:25:21 ◼   ► a three-year story starting in 2019,

00:25:26 ◼   ► that developers will be able to port,

00:25:29 ◼   ► I'm going to use the word porting, again,

00:25:31 ◼   ► lack of a better term, but build their iPad apps

00:25:35 ◼   ► and bundles for the Mac App Store.

00:25:37 ◼   ► So this is sort of like phase one of Marzipan.

00:25:40 ◼   ► He's saying this will be in 2019.

00:25:43 ◼   ► So it's assuming we'll see this at WODC

00:25:46 ◼   ► and in the next version of macOS,

00:25:48 ◼   ► where iPad apps can run on the Mac,

00:25:51 ◼   ► just like news and home and all that sort of stuff.

00:25:56 ◼   ► So that is where he says things are going to begin,

00:26:01 ◼   ► which makes sense, right?

00:26:03 ◼   ► Like it's the closest thing, I think,

00:26:06 ◼   ► to a Mac app as an iPad app.

00:26:08 ◼   ► So like, eh, I could see where this would be

00:26:11 ◼   ► where things begin.

00:26:12 ◼   ► What do y'all think?

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, makes sense, especially because it's not like,

00:26:18 ◼   ► I think the report says it will not be a bundle

00:26:22 ◼   ► on the app server like an iPad and a Mac app together,

00:26:26 ◼   ► but as a developer you will just be able to take your code for an iPad app

00:26:30 ◼   ► and it'll mostly work out of the box as a Mac app.

00:26:36 ◼   ► So it remains to be seen how evolved,

00:26:39 ◼   ► compared to the current crop of Marzipan apps, the final framework will be.

00:26:44 ◼   ► But the idea being that you don't have to learn a different framework from scratch,

00:26:49 ◼   ► you don't have to deal with UIKit and AppKit at the same time,

00:26:53 ◼   ► it'll just be UIKit all the way.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It'll just be iOS frameworks that now also work on the Mac.

00:26:58 ◼   ► So it opens the opportunity for iPad app developers

00:27:03 ◼   ► to bring their apps to the Mac.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Whereas now there's a barrier to entry for iOS developers

00:27:10 ◼   ► of which there are more than Mac developers like it or not.

00:27:14 ◼   ► This is the era where we live in.

00:27:17 ◼   ► All those developers, young developers,

00:27:19 ◼   ► all kinds of developers that are making iPad software

00:27:23 ◼   ► can now make Mac software.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And I think that's a beautiful thing.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And it'll drive some people crazy,

00:27:29 ◼   ► and it'll make other people like us happy, I think.

00:27:32 ◼   ► But the technicalities of that will be interesting.

00:27:36 ◼   ► Like, will you be able to tell a Marzipan app

00:27:40 ◼   ► from a real Mac app?

00:27:42 ◼   ► Probably.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Will there be some kind of--

00:27:44 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:27:45 ◼   ► - Will there be some kind of tribal sort of taking sides

00:27:50 ◼   ► among developers and users?

00:27:51 ◼   ► Yes, knowing people, they will take sides.

00:27:54 ◼   ► already happening right like if people are already angry about this and it's not here yet yeah but uh

00:27:59 ◼   ► i think it's a good idea the thing that i remain the thing that i remain the most interested about

00:28:03 ◼   ► which is something that mark can't know and no one will know for like like at least six to eight

00:28:10 ◼   ► months after um wwdc probably is like what effect this has on mac slash ipad development like how

00:28:21 ◼   ► does something like this change the way that apps on either platform is made?

00:28:25 ◼   ► Will people put more effort into their iPad apps than they did before and push them further than

00:28:32 ◼   ► they did before because they'll be able to run on the Mac as well? I'm really intrigued to see

00:28:38 ◼   ► what this ends up doing. Does it mean that we end up with a bunch of not incredible Mac apps,

00:28:47 ◼   ► but we end up with a bunch of Mac apps that didn't exist otherwise, that we're all happy exist now,

00:28:53 ◼   ► or do we end up in a situation which is the one that I hope, which is that

00:28:56 ◼   ► iPad development gets pushed forward more aggressively than it has been in years because

00:29:03 ◼   ► of the fact that you get this like two for one, and also you end up with more fresh Mac apps again

00:29:10 ◼   ► for the same reason, because there's now a two for one.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I guess the idea would be that if you now have the tools to bring your iPad app to the

00:29:20 ◼   ► Mac, but the Mac audience expects a certain degree of functionality, and so as an iPad

00:29:28 ◼   ► developer you will be more incentivized to care about stuff like keyboard shortcuts or

00:29:33 ◼   ► keyboard navigation or certain professional features, because if you are to sell your

00:29:41 ◼   ► app to the Mac audience, while those people expect a certain degree of functionality,

00:29:48 ◼   ► and that becomes sort of the tide that raises all boats in the sense that iPad users will

00:29:54 ◼   ► be happy and Mac users will be happy. So in theory that should be the plan, and I think

00:29:59 ◼   ► it's a clever plan if that is what Apple is doing. My only concern is, and I guess it

00:30:05 ◼   ► just comes with territory, it's not something that can be avoided, that there will be a

00:30:10 ◼   ► bunch of poor and useless ports of iPad apps just because they can exist. But this is something

00:30:18 ◼   ► that we see all the time whenever Apple opens up a new platform like the Apple Watch App

00:30:23 ◼   ► Store or the iMessage App Store. Like, there will be useless ports that are released just

00:30:30 ◼   ► because they can exist. But I think we can, you know, we will be able to separate those

00:30:37 ◼   ► that make sense from those that do not make sense. And also I'm interested to see like,

00:30:42 ◼   ► will this be a solution for companies like Twitter or Slack to, in the case of Twitter,

00:30:49 ◼   ► to actually offer a Mac app again even though their iPad... But that's the point, even though

00:30:54 ◼   ► their iPad app is not great, if they now have the tools to make you work on the Mac, they might just

00:31:00 ◼   ► fix the iPad app and take better advantage of the screen, because then Mac users will complain as

00:31:06 ◼   ► well. So it's a sort of catch two birds with one stone scenario here. And I think

00:31:13 ◼   ► the possible benefits of this approach are more like they are worth the

00:31:25 ◼   ► trade-off and the possible disadvantages and the possible downsides of doing this.

00:31:30 ◼   ► This has to be the calculus that Apple is doing that yes there will be some Mac

00:31:35 ◼   ► apps that do not feel like, I don't know, Final Cut or what's a good Mac app these days?

00:31:42 ◼   ► BB Edit. Like, there will be these apps that you can tell they come from the iPad. Still,

00:31:49 ◼   ► though, it's better than not have those apps at all and better than to have Electron apps

00:31:54 ◼   ► instead. So...

00:31:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I honestly don't see how there is a downside to this because the apps that weren't

00:32:01 ◼   ► going to be made with these tools whenever going to be made like this.

00:32:05 ◼   ► You know, like BB Edit is not going to go to this

00:32:09 ◼   ► and strip a bunch of functionality out.

00:32:12 ◼   ► Rather, that's not going to happen.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Like panic are not going to be like, oh, lol transmit doesn't work on the Mac.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Now we're going to revive an iOS app and port it back.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Yeah. Right.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Like it's not going to change that, but it's going to add in a bunch of new stuff.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And I don't understand necessarily why this is a problem.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Like I also saw, because part of this is right, the 2021,

00:32:35 ◼   ► that there'll be single binaries, right?

00:32:36 ◼   ► So you can have a Mac, an iPad, an iPhone app in theory,

00:32:40 ◼   ► which could all be combining together and combining the app stores.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And I've seen people complaining today that, oh, no,

00:32:47 ◼   ► this is now Apple taking more money away from us.

00:32:49 ◼   ► I don't see that happening either, because most of the developers

00:32:53 ◼   ► that would have an issue with this are probably not even using the Mac app store anyway.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And I also don't imagine that changing.

00:33:01 ◼   ► - As far as we know, Apple has no plans

00:33:04 ◼   ► to end non-app store distribution on the Mac.

00:33:08 ◼   ► This isn't, that isn't none of these stories.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So those classic Mac apps--

00:33:12 ◼   ► - There's like a million times

00:33:13 ◼   ► they could have done that before now,

00:33:14 ◼   ► and I don't think that this makes it any more likely

00:33:17 ◼   ► one way or the other. - I don't either.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So 2019, iPad apps coming to the Mac.

00:33:22 ◼   ► 2020, iPhone apps can be ported,

00:33:25 ◼   ► again, as separate app bundles.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Gurman says this is because of difficulty

00:33:30 ◼   ► with the screen size differences.

00:33:32 ◼   ► So maybe Apple's struggling how to make iPhone apps

00:33:35 ◼   ► not just look like rectangles on the Mac.

00:33:38 ◼   ► My question here with this is,

00:33:40 ◼   ► well, what about universal iOS apps?

00:33:42 ◼   ► So if I have a universal app and I make it narrow,

00:33:45 ◼   ► will it load the iPhone UI on the Mac?

00:33:48 ◼   ► I would assume that it would.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Something about this being,

00:33:52 ◼   ► like iPad and iPhone apps being separate by a year

00:33:55 ◼   ► feels a little weird to me.

00:33:59 ◼   ► - It feels to me that there's like something will happen

00:34:01 ◼   ► between 2019 and 2020.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Like there's something else,

00:34:05 ◼   ► like there's a second like shoe to drop that it's like.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:34:09 ◼   ► I think what Myke is saying is correct.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I think there will be either like some major change

00:34:13 ◼   ► to Xcode or maybe specifically to interface builder.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Maybe that's, Gruber was talking about this

00:34:21 ◼   ► a few months ago.

00:34:23 ◼   ► like a new way to design interfaces that when you take into account the constraints of an

00:34:30 ◼   ► iPhone interface and you want to make it scale up to fill a bigger display, the current solution

00:34:36 ◼   ► doesn't work and so you will have to have a different system which explains the like

00:34:43 ◼   ► 2019 for iPad and 2020 for iPhone. Like it feels there's a technological step needed

00:34:49 ◼   ► in between, otherwise why would there be any difference between iPad and iPhone?

00:34:54 ◼   ► And if it's a screen problem...

00:34:56 ◼   ► Yeah, this was that whole discussion that occurred before WWDC

00:35:01 ◼   ► last year, where John Gruber was saying that Mark Gorman was wrong

00:35:06 ◼   ► and that Marzipan wasn't what it was.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It was the idea of creating this system of

00:35:13 ◼   ► UI being made completely differently, right?

00:35:17 ◼   ► And that you would make all these declarations...

00:35:19 ◼   ► Clarity UI, thank you, that was the word, yes.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So, but then it was like, then there was this kind of like a peeing match between the two

00:35:28 ◼   ► of them, right?

00:35:29 ◼   ► Where like, German was like, no, it's my way.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And John was like, no, it's my way.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And then German won out.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean the Gruber is wrong.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:38 ◼   ► That what what Gruber was talking about wasn't something else, which could be that thing.

00:35:44 ◼   ► feels like we it's like, you know, trying to draw a big

00:35:48 ◼   ► picture, and we just have a small viewport here and there.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I clearly there's more to this stitching this together that we

00:35:53 ◼   ► don't know yet. But that makes it fun to talk about months in

00:35:57 ◼   ► advance.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Like you said, Myke in 2021, the single binary so a single app

00:36:04 ◼   ► bundle could be downloaded on the Mac, iPad and iPhone, which

00:36:08 ◼   ► Gurman said would effectively combine the app stores. So I

00:36:12 ◼   ► I don't know if that means that all iOS apps at this point could work on the Mac unmodified.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Clearly that means ARM Macs by 2021 are a thing, right?

00:36:23 ◼   ► Because for 2019 for an iPad app to be ported to a MacBook Pro that has an Intel processor

00:36:28 ◼   ► in it, it is going to have to be recompiled to some degree.

00:36:31 ◼   ► Right, but it depends on how you look at the iPad and the iPhone app stores today, right?

00:36:39 ◼   ► where they are combined, but it's not like,

00:36:43 ◼   ► iPhone apps are not presented front and center,

00:36:47 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:36:48 ◼   ► It's like, what way do we look at this?

00:36:50 ◼   ► Do you consider the iPhone and iPad app stores

00:36:52 ◼   ► right now to be the same?

00:36:55 ◼   ► - I mean, kind of.

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's confusing, right?

00:36:59 ◼   ► And I think that the undercurrent for me in all this

00:37:01 ◼   ► is what does this timeline say about ARM Macs?

00:37:05 ◼   ► I'm of two minds of this.

00:37:08 ◼   ► If ARM Macs are still a couple of years out, then Apple's asking developers to take an

00:37:14 ◼   ► iPad app or an iPhone app eventually, do the work to make it run on an Intel machine, and

00:37:21 ◼   ► then, "Oh, by the way, 18 months later, 24 months later, oh, there's ARM Macs.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Look at all that work you did to make your iOS app work on an Intel machine?

00:37:29 ◼   ► We don't need that anymore.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Just discard all that work you did."

00:37:33 ◼   ► That's not great.

00:37:34 ◼   ► But then the flip side is worse, where if they roll this out with a new ARM MacBook

00:37:38 ◼   ► and say this only works on the new MacBook

00:37:39 ◼   ► and it will only work on our Macs

00:37:41 ◼   ► and all those Intel Macs we sold and still sell today,

00:37:44 ◼   ► they don't get any of this.

00:37:45 ◼   ► That's also bad.

00:37:46 ◼   ► So again, there's some middle ground here.

00:37:49 ◼   ► There's something that we can't see.

00:37:52 ◼   ► It may be that preparing an iOS app for Intel

00:37:55 ◼   ► is not a big deal.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Maybe it's better than it was during the PowerPC transition.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Maybe they've really gotten it where

00:38:04 ◼   ► it's not a big deal at all.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Or maybe you don't have to do it

00:38:06 ◼   ► and they're doing some emulation for you automatically.

00:38:10 ◼   ► You know, where you just, it's actually the same code

00:38:13 ◼   ► and they run a translation layer like Rosetta was.

00:38:16 ◼   ► So it may be that it doesn't require ARM Macs at all.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I mean, yes, the chat room is yelling at me,

00:38:21 ◼   ► yes, Mac OS supports fat binaries,

00:38:24 ◼   ► I've done that for a long time.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But like, this is a new era and a new set of problems

00:38:29 ◼   ► from PowerPC to Intel and Apple's got to tell a story there

00:38:33 ◼   ► that makes sense for developers to do it, right?

00:38:36 ◼   ► So when they switched to Intel, the story was, hey, if you recompile your apps, they're

00:38:40 ◼   ► going to be four to five times faster.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Like you know, you're going to be able to take benefit of all this Intel stuff, and

00:38:46 ◼   ► you won't be dependent on Rosetta.

00:38:48 ◼   ► And eventually Rosetta is going to go away.

00:38:50 ◼   ► So you should do this.

00:38:53 ◼   ► That is not the story this time.

00:38:54 ◼   ► And so Apple needs to have a compelling reason for developers to go down this road, because

00:38:59 ◼   ► They're asking them to take a product and an application and port it to a less popular

00:39:07 ◼   ► platform.

00:39:08 ◼   ► This is the truth.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I love the Mac more than almost anyone, it feels like.

00:39:12 ◼   ► It is a less popular platform.

00:39:13 ◼   ► You're asking developers to do something that isn't a guaranteed win for them business-wise.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So you've got to make that as easy as possible, and I think that's another factor here to

00:39:23 ◼   ► consider.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's all very exhausting to think about, guys.

00:39:28 ◼   ► I did want to point out one thing in this article that I didn't love.

00:39:32 ◼   ► I said I wanted to go past.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Pretty high in the article, Gorman writes, "Each new app is another revenue opportunity

00:39:39 ◼   ► for Apple because it takes a cut of many app-related purchases and subscriptions.

00:39:43 ◼   ► The company has positioned its services division as a major growth area."

00:39:48 ◼   ► Now, he does go on later and say, "Oh, well, it's good for users and developers too."

00:39:55 ◼   ► And I think I'm reading into what he wrote, right?

00:39:59 ◼   ► But I think the order of those things is wrong.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I think Apple is doing this because it believes it's good for the platforms.

00:40:05 ◼   ► It's a lifeboat for the Mac, which has an app ecosystem that is not healthy.

00:40:09 ◼   ► It is good for users and developers.

00:40:12 ◼   ► It benefits users to be on all Apple platforms if their apps work everywhere.

00:40:18 ◼   ► And it's good for developers potentially because they could make more money.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Yes, the side effect of that is Apple makes more money, but I don't read any of this as

00:40:26 ◼   ► Apple doing this to marginally improve their services revenue because Apple is spending

00:40:34 ◼   ► who knows how much money in engineering talent and engineering hours to make all this stuff

00:40:43 ◼   ► work.

00:40:44 ◼   ► They're never going to make that back on the 30% stuff of what, you know, if these apps

00:40:50 ◼   ► charged separately from their iOS bundles, right? Like that math doesn't make any sense to me. So

00:40:54 ◼   ► I just, everyone right now wants to put every Apple story through the context of the services

00:41:00 ◼   ► revenue. And I just I think that's a little lazy and not fair to what the company's trying to do.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess I see why like, at first I didn't, I didn't understand why you dislike the point. But

00:41:13 ◼   ► then in the context of now every single thing that Apple does is parsed through the lens of

00:41:19 ◼   ► Apple is now a services company? Yeah, I mean, of course they are investing in this stuff

00:41:26 ◼   ► because they want to make it easier to buy software and to buy it on more platforms.

00:41:31 ◼   ► But then again, it'll like this very idea of having a single binary that runs across

00:41:38 ◼   ► multiple devices potentially it means Apple is taking 30% of a single price, like a single

00:41:47 ◼   ► price or a single purchase from the user.

00:41:49 ◼   ► So it kind of runs counter to the very premise

00:41:52 ◼   ► of they're doing it because of services,

00:41:54 ◼   ► because it means less revenue in theory.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you wanted to do it as services,

00:41:59 ◼   ► you would do all of this, but keep the app store separate.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:42:03 ◼   ► I think the point that I wanted to make in this segment is

00:42:07 ◼   ► the more we hear about this stuff,

00:42:12 ◼   ► and now we have more details of this possible timeline

00:42:15 ◼   ► for 2020 and 2021, the more it seems clear

00:42:19 ◼   ► that we are moving, like it or not,

00:42:21 ◼   ► to a point where there will be a single Apple platform.

00:42:25 ◼   ► I don't want to say Apple OS yet,

00:42:29 ◼   ► even though I think that's what we'll have in five years,

00:42:32 ◼   ► but the idea of a shared app platform

00:42:35 ◼   ► between iOS and the Mac is the end goal.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And I feel like starting with apps

00:42:43 ◼   ► and slowly merging, starting with iPad apps

00:42:46 ◼   ► can now run on the Mac,

00:42:48 ◼   ► and then make it possible for release the first Macs

00:42:53 ◼   ► with ARM chips inside made by Apple,

00:42:57 ◼   ► and then make it possible for iPhone apps to run on the Mac,

00:43:00 ◼   ► and then make a single binary.

00:43:02 ◼   ► I mean, at that point,

00:43:03 ◼   ► you're just unifying multiple devices into one app platform.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And once you reach that, in 2022, for example,

00:43:14 ◼   ► why not just have a single Apple OS?

00:43:17 ◼   ► So the idea of, and this is my belief

00:43:21 ◼   ► and there's other people that would agree with this,

00:43:24 ◼   ► but I think the future should be one

00:43:28 ◼   ► of a single operating system that can scale

00:43:31 ◼   ► across different types of computers,

00:43:34 ◼   ► different types of screens, different interactions.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I'm not arguing in favor of the death of the Mac

00:43:40 ◼   ► or saying the Mac should go away.

00:43:43 ◼   ► I think this distinction between iOS and macOS is weird.

00:43:48 ◼   ► And I think we're reaching the point where,

00:43:50 ◼   ► first with apps, and then, and yes, I know

00:43:54 ◼   ► that Apple said no to combining iOS and macOS,

00:43:59 ◼   ► but we all know that Apple can say one thing

00:44:01 ◼   ► and have dozens of invisible footnotes

00:44:05 ◼   ► in every statement that they make publicly.

00:44:07 ◼   ► And in that case, it will not be merging iOS and macOS,

00:44:12 ◼   ► it'll be a new thing.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it's like technically we didn't merge them,

00:44:17 ◼   ► it's brand new.

00:44:18 ◼   ► What you talking about?

00:44:20 ◼   ► - This is pure Apple playbook.

00:44:21 ◼   ► They didn't merge them, they made a new thing.

00:44:24 ◼   ► So I feel like you can still have

00:44:27 ◼   ► what you love about the Mac,

00:44:28 ◼   ► you can still have what you love about iOS,

00:44:31 ◼   ► but you can remove this entire overhead

00:44:33 ◼   ► of some things run on macOS and macOS has certain frameworks

00:44:38 ◼   ► and interactions and other things work only on iOS.

00:44:41 ◼   ► It's a lot of work for everybody.

00:44:42 ◼   ► It's a lot of work for users to understand.

00:44:44 ◼   ► It's a lot of work for Apple.

00:44:45 ◼   ► It's a lot of work for developers.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Why not make it easy?

00:44:48 ◼   ► We have the tools to make software that can adapt,

00:44:53 ◼   ► that can change depending on the device that you're using,

00:44:57 ◼   ► whether it's touch, cursor, big screen, small screen,

00:45:00 ◼   ► multiple windows, multiple monitors.

00:45:01 ◼   ► like we are advanced enough, technologically speaking, to have this kind of stuff.

00:45:07 ◼   ► Other companies are already doing it.

00:45:09 ◼   ► So I feel like, you know, I keep coming back to this metaphor of like a song, like music.

00:45:20 ◼   ► Like I think of the future of the single Apple OS, the single Apple platform, as like you have the same song

00:45:30 ◼   ► and you can listen to the same song using different devices.

00:45:34 ◼   ► You can listen to the song with your iPhone speakers,

00:45:37 ◼   ► you can listen to the same song with the HomePod,

00:45:39 ◼   ► and you can use your earbuds, your AirPods,

00:45:42 ◼   ► your headphones, your car stereo,

00:45:44 ◼   ► but it's always the same song.

00:45:45 ◼   ► It's always the same, at a basic level, the same experience,

00:45:49 ◼   ► but it changes, like on your HomePod,

00:45:51 ◼   ► you hear the bass is better and louder,

00:45:54 ◼   ► and maybe with your over-ear headphones,

00:45:57 ◼   ► you hear other details better,

00:45:59 ◼   ► but it's still the same song and the idea of it's still the same OS,

00:46:03 ◼   ► but you just switch computers and you switch screens and sizes and workstations.

00:46:09 ◼   ► That's the future that I want to see.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And it's going to make a lot of people uneasy,

00:46:15 ◼   ► but I feel it's the right thing to do.

00:46:18 ◼   ► And this is a timeline.

00:46:19 ◼   ► This rumor provides a timeline where we're now in 2019.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I strongly believe that by 2023, so five years,

00:46:28 ◼   ► will have this kind of future.

00:46:30 ◼   ► One last thing in the report, just basically thrown in

00:46:34 ◼   ► at the bottom was the Mac Pro may be showing off at WWDC.

00:46:37 ◼   ► So keeping an eye out for my pick for the year, I guess.

00:46:41 ◼   ► I appreciate that, Germin.

00:46:43 ◼   ► I think we all felt that, right?

00:46:46 ◼   ► I don't think that's a surprise.

00:46:48 ◼   ► This seems inevitable.

00:46:50 ◼   ► All right, so we have some more stuff to talk about,

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00:49:20 ◼   ► and Real AFM.

00:49:21 ◼   ► - So our good friend, Mr. Ming-Chi Kuo,

00:49:25 ◼   ► dropped a beautiful graphic.

00:49:27 ◼   ► You've all seen the graphic, right?

00:49:30 ◼   ► You've seen the graphic, it's so fun, I love it.

00:49:32 ◼   ► There's like a rabbit and a pig

00:49:35 ◼   ► and there's like some flowers and it's all different colors

00:49:39 ◼   ► and I love the font that they chose.

00:49:42 ◼   ► My buddy Ming Chi uses Pixelmator to get this stuff done.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I'm not surprised. It's very cool.

00:49:50 ◼   ► I like this graphic a lot.

00:49:51 ◼   ► I don't it's like one of the things I don't know why they chose to display

00:49:54 ◼   ► that way, but I kind of love that they did.

00:49:57 ◼   ► But there's a there's a whole ton of things on here,

00:50:00 ◼   ► and we're probably not going to cover all of them.

00:50:02 ◼   ► We should maybe just tackle a few of the things that's reported in this.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So I guess the big, big thing is the

00:50:11 ◼   ► MacBook Pro. There's a rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro coming sometime this year.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Like all of the stuff that Ming-Chi Kuo is talking about is stuff that he expects to be this year.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Stephen, do you want to give us the breakdown of what this MacBook Pro could look like and/or

00:50:31 ◼   ► what you think it might look like based upon the information that Kuo has given?

00:50:36 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, basically, the the whole of this part of his report is that Apple

00:50:42 ◼   ► will be releasing a new MacBook Pro between 16 and 16.5 inches in size. Remember, his sources are

00:50:49 ◼   ► like supply chain type sources. Like he's rarely wrong about size stuff, right? He knew the size

00:50:55 ◼   ► of the iPhones for this past year, you know, way in advance, and he knew the size of the 10s,

00:51:00 ◼   ► the XR or the Max early on.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So when he has something to say about dimensions, I generally believe it.

00:51:08 ◼   ► So 16, 16.5 inch MacBook Pro with what he's calling an all new design.

00:51:14 ◼   ► So this is not just the 15 inch MacBook Pro stretch.

00:51:19 ◼   ► So some sort of new design.

00:51:22 ◼   ► I sort of struggled to understand what that would look like because I feel like the MacBook

00:51:26 ◼   ► Pro is about as simple and as plain of a notebook design as you can get besides the touch bar,

00:51:31 ◼   ► but I guess we'll see what they have to do there.

00:51:35 ◼   ► So this is really interesting for a bunch of reasons.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The current MacBook Pro, the big one, is 15 inches.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And some people have said, "Well, this is just going to be them doing the bezel-less

00:51:50 ◼   ► thing and shrinking the bezels around that display."

00:51:55 ◼   ► And I'm not sure that's actually what's gonna happen here.

00:51:59 ◼   ► So the current MacBook Pro is actually a 15.4 inch diagonal display.

00:52:04 ◼   ► I don't have one of these 15 inch MacBook Pros in person, but looking at my 13 inch

00:52:08 ◼   ► MacBook Pro of the same design, I'm actually not sure there's enough bezel left to stretch

00:52:15 ◼   ► it and hit the 16 or 16 and a half inches he's talking about.

00:52:20 ◼   ► So I tend to think this is a bigger notebook.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Like it's actually physically bigger than the 15 inch MacBook Pro.

00:52:26 ◼   ► What I thought about instantly was when Apple introduced the retina

00:52:31 ◼   ► MacBook Pro back in 2012, it was a new design, whole new machine, right?

00:52:37 ◼   ► Like no spinning hard drives, different IO, different design.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Of course, the retina display being at the heart of it.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And it was introduced as a high end model above the other MacBook Pros.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And over time, the Retina display and the new design

00:52:53 ◼   ► slowly worked its way down.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And before we knew it, after a few years,

00:52:59 ◼   ► all the 15-inch MacBook Pros were Retina,

00:53:01 ◼   ► and then all the 13-inch MacBook Pros were Retina.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And then they've slowly phased the other design out.

00:53:06 ◼   ► That's kind of what I think could happen here.

00:53:09 ◼   ► I think that we could see a 15-inch and a 16.5-inch

00:53:13 ◼   ► for a while, and then this new design come down.

00:53:17 ◼   ► I would like--

00:53:18 ◼   ► Yeah, because you've got to guess that a machine like this one is going to be more expensive

00:53:23 ◼   ► as a starting point than what they currently have, right?

00:53:26 ◼   ► I would think so.

00:53:28 ◼   ► There's still this thing of size and price being sort of a ratio with Apple, so a bigger

00:53:33 ◼   ► machine you should kind of assume will demand a higher price.

00:53:36 ◼   ► So that could be an outcome here.

00:53:38 ◼   ► I would like to see them change the design all at once, but that's just coming from a

00:53:42 ◼   ► frustration point of the MacBook Pro.

00:53:45 ◼   ► But I do think that there's demand for this.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I think there were people who were sad when the 17 went away.

00:53:50 ◼   ► The 17 inch never entered the retina era.

00:53:52 ◼   ► And there are people who do want more space,

00:53:56 ◼   ► but more importantly, they want better performance.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And the 15 inch, we're gonna talk about this in a second,

00:54:02 ◼   ► the 15 inch MacBook Pro, I think it's impressive,

00:54:05 ◼   ► but they could do more with it

00:54:06 ◼   ► if they had better cooling and more space.

00:54:09 ◼   ► And so this could be an even more powerful machine.

00:54:13 ◼   ► They could bring in some like really high,

00:54:15 ◼   ► You know, AMD has a new line of mobile graphics with all the RTX stuff, and they could bring

00:54:22 ◼   ► that into this potentially.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It could really be an interesting machine.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And hey, you know, they could give it great battery life and let it be cooler.

00:54:32 ◼   ► It's easy to pin all of our desires on this machine, so that's what I'm doing.

00:54:35 ◼   ► But I think it's going to be a new high-end model that introduces something new that eventually

00:54:39 ◼   ► comes to the rest of them.

00:54:41 ◼   ► So Quo refers to it as an all new design, right?

00:54:45 ◼   ► Like all new design.

00:54:47 ◼   ► What does all new design mean to you other than it's got a bigger screen?

00:54:52 ◼   ► It means that it's got a revised keyboard.

00:54:58 ◼   ► I think if they say it's an all new design and it's the same keyboard, people are going

00:55:01 ◼   ► to be upset.

00:55:02 ◼   ► So I think they're going to address the keyboard.

00:55:04 ◼   ► But I think that maybe they bring it more in line with the iPad, potentially, the way

00:55:12 ◼   ► the iPad looks.

00:55:13 ◼   ► I don't suspect that we'll see a big change in terms of I/O.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I think it's still going to be Thunderbolt 3 only.

00:55:20 ◼   ► I think it will be less of a big deal when they went from the 2015 to the 2016.

00:55:25 ◼   ► That was a radical departure.

00:55:27 ◼   ► I see this being less of a departure than that was.

00:55:32 ◼   ► I struggle sometimes with my imagination and these sorts of things so who knows

00:55:35 ◼   ► I'm just wondering because like I was talking to Jason about this a bit on upgrade and I want to see what you think I

00:55:41 ◼   ► Kind of feel like the laptop design is is been has been solved like there isn't really

00:55:47 ◼   ► Much more at least that Apple will want to do

00:55:52 ◼   ► There there are things that other companies are doing like making them into convertible devices

00:55:59 ◼   ► Putting leather on the outside of them like that stuff that's happening, but I can't imagine a MacBook Pro

00:56:04 ◼   ► Looking that much different when it's closed for example than what they currently do yeah

00:56:11 ◼   ► I mean they love thin aluminum machines right like it's and they're not gonna. I don't think they're gonna experiment with materials very much

00:56:18 ◼   ► You know

00:56:20 ◼   ► Bring the bezels down replace the keyboard, and maybe you ditch the touch bar in this or something

00:56:25 ◼   ► - I was just about to ask you that.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Touch bar or no touch bar?

00:56:30 ◼   ► - That is, I mean, so, colored through my personal

00:56:34 ◼   ► experience with the touch bar, I would say get rid of it,

00:56:36 ◼   ► and we never speak of it again.

00:56:38 ◼   ► You know, this is gonna be a pro level machine,

00:56:41 ◼   ► and I'm not sure that pros have been really sold on it.

00:56:45 ◼   ► You know, 'cause they have the type of users who

00:56:48 ◼   ► are wired into keyboard shortcuts and stuff, you know?

00:56:51 ◼   ► I would love that this would be maybe the first machine

00:56:54 ◼   ► that had touch as an option,

00:56:55 ◼   ► but I don't see them doing like a two in one

00:56:58 ◼   ► Surface Book type thing.

00:57:00 ◼   ► I just, I feel like Apple's allergic to it

00:57:02 ◼   ► with the Mac for some reason.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Which is a bummer.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:57:06 ◼   ► - I think they should do it,

00:57:07 ◼   ► but I don't see it coming with this.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay.

00:57:11 ◼   ► - This MacBook Pro though is gonna have a buddy,

00:57:14 ◼   ► potentially.

00:57:15 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Which is perhaps even more exciting

00:57:19 ◼   ► because it, I think could go to a wider number of users.

00:57:23 ◼   ► So Apple, you know, been out of the display business

00:57:26 ◼   ► for a while and he's saying they're gonna come back in

00:57:29 ◼   ► with a 31.6 inch, 6K, he calls that 6K 3K,

00:57:34 ◼   ► which I think is just like a 6K,

00:57:38 ◼   ► I think he's talking about the horizontal

00:57:39 ◼   ► and vertical resolution, but a 6K monitor

00:57:42 ◼   ► powered by mini--

00:57:44 ◼   ► - Or it folds. - Or it folds.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Just like whatever Samsung is doing right now as a record.

00:57:49 ◼   ► - Uh-huh, 6K 3K.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Powered by mini LED, which is something Apple's been playing with.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I assumed that was gonna come to the watch first, but maybe it's gonna come here.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Clearly this display would look incredible, but I got to thinking, "Wait a second.

00:58:05 ◼   ► What does Apple have that can drive a 6K display?"

00:58:07 ◼   ► And that led me down basically like 45 minutes of reading Thunderbolt spec sheets, so I have

00:58:12 ◼   ► some knowledge to drop on y'all.

00:58:15 ◼   ► - You had the greatest afternoon you could possibly give yourself.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3, which showed up in these MacBook Pros I've been talking about, can push two

00:58:25 ◼   ► 4K 60Hz displays or one 60Hz 5K display.

00:58:33 ◼   ► This is basically over a single...

00:58:34 ◼   ► When you talk about the number of ports versus the number of lanes with Thunderbolt, it gets

00:58:39 ◼   ► confusing.

00:58:40 ◼   ► I'm sort of glossing over some of that, but two 4K displays, one 5K display is what Thunderbolt

00:58:44 ◼   ► can do.

00:58:45 ◼   ► is through DisplayPort, which is a connection type that rides on top of

00:58:50 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3. So remember Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB C connector but it also

00:58:56 ◼   ► carries Thunderbolt 2 and DisplayPort and like USB A and like all these other

00:58:59 ◼   ► things crammed in for the ride. It's it's a little confusing to talk about.

00:59:05 ◼   ► DisplayPort 1.4, which is the the newest standard DisplayPort, can drive 8k

00:59:13 ◼   ► displays. Now to do this you need the updated Thunderbolt 3 controller that

00:59:18 ◼   ► Intel released last year called Titan Ridge. So it's still Thunderbolt 3, the

00:59:23 ◼   ► port looks the same, it acts the same, but it's got more bandwidth. With the 2018

00:59:28 ◼   ► MacBook Pros, Apple moved to Titan Ridge controllers. It's just in the notebooks

00:59:33 ◼   ► and it is more bandwidth, it's super speedy, but Apple didn't fully implement

00:59:42 ◼   ► DisplayPort 1.4 on that controller. So the hardware, the connection is

00:59:51 ◼   ► capable of driving an 8k display, but the crummy GPUs Apple puts in their

00:59:57 ◼   ► notebooks is not capable of driving that. So Apple caps these machines at 5k

01:00:03 ◼   ► output. My question initially was can Thunderbolt 3 even drive a 6k display?

01:00:07 ◼   ► The answer is yes. The sub answer is but none of Apple current's Thunderbolt 3

01:00:11 ◼   ► machines can do it because of the GPU situation.

01:00:14 ◼   ► So it's like a good news, bad news.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Yeah. Good news is Apple has the ability to do this.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Bad news. It's going to be like we're drawing a line in the sand.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Right. Because clearly this monitor is for this new mythical MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Like that's what it's for. Right.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Like it's for those two things.

01:00:33 ◼   ► We'll maybe get to something else in a minute.

01:00:35 ◼   ► But like that's what we're assuming that, you know, they will probably be like, oh, hey, in June,

01:00:41 ◼   ► we have this MacBook Pro, here is that MacBook Pro, here is a monitor, these will be available

01:00:46 ◼   ► in four weeks, and here's a teaser about the Mac Pro which will also be able to use this

01:00:50 ◼   ► thing, right?

01:00:51 ◼   ► Totally.

01:00:52 ◼   ► That's totally what's gonna happen.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Because for Ming-Chi Kuo to know about this stuff right now must mean it's closer than

01:00:56 ◼   ► the Mac Pro which he seems to know nothing on except the fact that it's coming, but he

01:01:00 ◼   ► didn't know that, everybody knows that, Apple said it, so like, he doesn't necessarily know

01:01:04 ◼   ► anything that Mark Gurman doesn't know, or that I don't know, right?

01:01:08 ◼   ► Like it's just, we all know it.

01:01:09 ◼   ► I came down, going down this rabbit hole, they make a 15 inch MacBook Pro with a beefier

01:01:15 ◼   ► GPU, now they rolled it out in the fall.

01:01:18 ◼   ► There was speculation at the time that Apple could enable DisplayPort 1.4 for that machine

01:01:24 ◼   ► with a firmware update and they haven't done it.

01:01:26 ◼   ► So either that GPU isn't powerful enough or they're just unwilling to do it for whatever

01:01:31 ◼   ► reason.

01:01:33 ◼   ► This is doable.

01:01:34 ◼   ► I think you're right.

01:01:35 ◼   ► display would work with the 2019 MacBook Pro and the 2019 Mac Pro and the 2019

01:01:41 ◼   ► you know iMac Pro or whatever but not current machines which that's not crazy

01:01:48 ◼   ► uncommon when Apple's route displays you know they had I just wrote this piece

01:01:53 ◼   ► for Federico about macworld 2009 and that was when they were moving to

01:01:56 ◼   ► DisplayPort for the first time before Thunderbolt just regular display port

01:02:00 ◼   ► and mini display port and they had an the LED cinema display which used main

01:02:06 ◼   ► display port and then they rolled out Thunderbolt max and then they had the

01:02:10 ◼   ► thunderbolt display but the thunderbolt display was only compatible with new max

01:02:16 ◼   ► it wasn't backwards compatible even though the connector was the same so

01:02:20 ◼   ► this would be a similar situation here I think where it's compatible with these

01:02:24 ◼   ► machines even though the ports look the same they're not the same which is a

01:02:28 ◼   ► It's a little confusing if you're just going into a store to buy something, but you can

01:02:32 ◼   ► say, "Oh, well, it supports a 2019 machine.

01:02:34 ◼   ► I have a 2017, so it won't work."

01:02:36 ◼   ► So it's not great, but people can deal with it.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Where this gets interesting is what we're going to talk about after the break, because

01:02:46 ◼   ► Federico had a really good question for me that we went further down.

01:02:50 ◼   ► We went deeper into Intel spec sheets.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Before we do, I just have one thing I wanted to mention about the monitor, right?

01:02:57 ◼   ► 30 inches and that's just funny to me because it feels like monitors never got bigger than that.

01:03:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean...

01:03:02 ◼   ► Right, like it's just a funny thing that like it seems that on a desk, I mean I think for good

01:03:08 ◼   ► reason we found the maximum size of monitors like 10 years ago.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean Apple had that 30 inch and I remember if you had it you were like

01:03:17 ◼   ► baller status. It was really expensive.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It's huge, it's huge.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean 30...

01:03:22 ◼   ► But like even gaming monitors though, like you know, the ultra wides excluded,

01:03:26 ◼   ► but by and large they're in the high 20 inches. Well part of that is based on resolution right,

01:03:33 ◼   ► so if you don't want to have a 4k display above a certain size point because then it's like you can

01:03:38 ◼   ► see the pixels again so part of that like you know that's there's some fudge there I think but

01:03:42 ◼   ► it's really interesting yeah it's a bit it's a big gonna be a big boy uh hooked up to our

01:03:48 ◼   ► Mac Pros at the end of the year. I'm sure Casey's very excited. I'm actually very excited about it

01:03:55 ◼   ► But it's becoming more exciting the more I hear about it.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Like that screen sounds berserk.

01:04:01 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:04:02 ◼   ► It's gonna be cool.

01:04:04 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Care/Of.

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01:07:13 ◼   ► their support of this show and Real AFM. So we've been talking about this new

01:07:18 ◼   ► display 6k and Federico has what I've termed pixel lust. He's got that 4k

01:07:25 ◼   ► display but the man just wants more and so we started thinking about what would

01:07:30 ◼   ► happen if the iPad Pro got an update? Could it support something like this?

01:07:34 ◼   ► what would it what would it mean for it to be you know more capable than just

01:07:40 ◼   ► with a new Mac and that's where we get into USB 3.1 gen 2 yeah just the current

01:07:50 ◼   ► standard 10 gigabits per second bandwidth yeah we're just super fast but

01:07:55 ◼   ► not near enough for this sort of display right there's not enough bandwidth well

01:07:59 ◼   ► USB 3.2, dear friends, is out there on the horizon being tested. I don't know how

01:08:06 ◼   ► you test a USB spec. You know, do you make it run? Do you starve it and

01:08:12 ◼   ► see if it gets angry? I don't know what you do, but they're testing it and it

01:08:15 ◼   ► seems like USB 3.2 could answer some of these issues, but maybe not all of them.

01:08:21 ◼   ► So the bandwidth needed for 6k is beyond the 20 gigabits per second that USB 3.2

01:08:29 ◼   ► will offer. In my reading it seems like USB 3.2 could support a 5k display. So

01:08:39 ◼   ► right now like the iPad Pro or the OnePort MacBook can only drive the LG 4k

01:08:43 ◼   ► but the 5k requires Thunderbolt again for the additional bandwidth. So it may

01:08:48 ◼   ► be that the iPad Pro can push a 5k display if this new connector makes it

01:08:51 ◼   ► to the iPad or makes it to the new MacBook at some point. But it seems like

01:08:55 ◼   ► like from my understanding at least that 6k and higher is going to require

01:08:59 ◼   ► Thunderbolt and at this point that's not in an iPad. Yeah and it feels

01:09:07 ◼   ► like if Apple is indeed making this 6k display and assuming that again it would

01:09:15 ◼   ► just be strange I think if Apple were to release a display and it did not support

01:09:21 ◼   ► the iPad Pro. I think it would be strange, especially considering how they made a

01:09:28 ◼   ► big deal of external display support on the iPad Pro last year. Now, I just, I

01:09:33 ◼   ► cannot imagine Apple saying "we made a new display but it's only for Macs"

01:09:37 ◼   ► especially if the iPad Pro is gonna have some productivity enhancements in the

01:09:42 ◼   ► next version of iOS and maybe they're gonna have some external displays

01:09:45 ◼   ► support new stuff, new APIs or whatever. So I was thinking about the

01:09:52 ◼   ► rumor that we saw that Apple is indeed working on a spec bump for the iPad Pros

01:09:59 ◼   ► in 2019. So we were all just assuming that the next iPad Pro would come out in

01:10:04 ◼   ► 2020 because they are on a two-year release cycle and you know

01:10:08 ◼   ► the iPad Pro just came out in November 2018 so the design is gonna stay the

01:10:13 ◼   ► for at least couple of years, but now there's this rumor saying that Apple is

01:10:17 ◼   ► working on a spec bump for the iPad Pros this year, and so I started wondering

01:10:22 ◼   ► what if this spec bump is necessary to make those new iPad Pros support the

01:10:29 ◼   ► new Apple display, the new 6K Apple display that they're supposedly making.

01:10:33 ◼   ► But if that is the case, I have to wonder, USB 3.2 is still in the testing stages,

01:10:40 ◼   ► It's not been widely adopted. I cannot think of any device that you can get off Amazon or any other consumer electronics product that currently supports USB 3.2 at 20 gigabits per second.

01:10:55 ◼   ► So could this mean that Apple is going to finally cave and bring Thunderbolt support to the iPad?

01:11:06 ◼   ► Is that even possible without an Intel GPU behind the scenes?

01:11:13 ◼   ► Or does this mean that the display will not support the iPad Pro?

01:11:18 ◼   ► So I'm just wondering what's the strangest outcome here?

01:11:25 ◼   ► that Apple releases a display that does not support the iPad Pro or that Apple has figured

01:11:30 ◼   ► out a way to bring Thunderbolt to the iPad Pro?

01:11:34 ◼   ► And I...

01:11:35 ◼   ► Well, the thing hanging over that question is, again, the ARM Mac.

01:11:43 ◼   ► I don't think Apple wants to drop Thunderbolt from the Mac.

01:11:45 ◼   ► And so at some point you've got to think they're going to bring Thunderbolt to ARM.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So Thunderbolt is an Intel technology,

01:11:51 ◼   ► but they have made it where OEMs can use it.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And I'm not sure if that means Apple could just

01:11:58 ◼   ► take it and stick it in an ARM machine,

01:12:00 ◼   ► or if it's even possible.

01:12:02 ◼   ► That's engineering way above my pay grade.

01:12:04 ◼   ► But it feels inevitable that Thunderbolt,

01:12:08 ◼   ► or something equivalent to it, will come to ARM devices made

01:12:11 ◼   ► by Apple.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I just don't know if it's now.

01:12:14 ◼   ► I think if they release this display

01:12:15 ◼   ► and it does not support the iPad Pro, that's a bummer.

01:12:18 ◼   ► But I don't think it--

01:12:20 ◼   ► I think that's definitely possible and actually probably

01:12:22 ◼   ► likely even.

01:12:24 ◼   ► I mean, I would love for Apple to bring some consistency

01:12:27 ◼   ► to this and say both the Mac and the iPad Pro,

01:12:30 ◼   ► they support USB-C, and they support Thunderbolt,

01:12:33 ◼   ► and DisplayPort 1.4.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And you can use the same 5K or 6K display

01:12:38 ◼   ► either with your Mac or your iPad Pro.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I think that would be the right thing to do, especially

01:12:42 ◼   ► because the USB spec is not advancing as quickly

01:12:47 ◼   ► as Thunderbolt 3 at this point. So we're still in the testing stages for something that is stuck at

01:12:53 ◼   ► 20 gigabits per second and Thunderbolt 3 is already double that and shipping right now. So

01:13:00 ◼   ► before something like USB 3.2 Gen 2 or even USB 3.3 is available it'll be several years.

01:13:10 ◼   ► And again I think it's just strange to imagine that Apple is back in the display business but

01:13:15 ◼   ► but it just works with the Mac.

01:13:17 ◼   ► So personally, I think it's more likely/I wanna believe

01:13:22 ◼   ► the Thunderbolt is coming to the iPad Pro.

01:13:25 ◼   ► And there's also this rumor of a spec bump this year.

01:13:30 ◼   ► That would sort of remind me of when Apple made a big deal

01:13:35 ◼   ► with the iPad 3, the first to go Retina,

01:13:38 ◼   ► and then a few months later they did the iPad 4

01:13:40 ◼   ► because they needed to switch to Lightning.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And so everybody was upset because, oh, the new iPad 3 just came out a few months ago,

01:13:47 ◼   ► and now you already have the iPad 4, which was essentially the same iPad, but just with

01:13:52 ◼   ► the new Lightning port instead of the 30-pin dock connector.

01:13:55 ◼   ► But yeah, I think, I mean, I would love for the iPad Pro to gain, you know, software-wise

01:14:02 ◼   ► better integration with external displays, and I want this 6K Apple monitor to exist.

01:14:10 ◼   ► The report is also saying that it will be like the, what's the name, micro LED display.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Super super fancy stuff.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So mini LED.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Real fancy, I can imagine that it'll be beautiful and like a beautiful piece of hardware, unlike

01:14:26 ◼   ► the LG Ultra Find that I have, which is functional but ugly.

01:14:31 ◼   ► I think that maybe the stars are lining up for the iPad to support this based upon the

01:14:39 ◼   ► update to the iPad Pro which Quo just calls like a processor bump which

01:14:44 ◼   ► doesn't make any sense otherwise because they've never done this before where

01:14:54 ◼   ► they've had an iPad Pro not change except forget a new processor like that

01:15:00 ◼   ► is that's a that's a weird thing to see I think like why else would they do that

01:15:07 ◼   ► I don't know why they wouldn't just leave it for the 18 months.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Unless it's like something else in iOS that that would require it.

01:15:13 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:15:15 ◼   ► It seems that seems a little strange to me.

01:15:16 ◼   ► And it's it sounds oddly specific to say

01:15:20 ◼   ► iPad Pro spec bump in 2019, like we just had a new iPad Pro.

01:15:24 ◼   ► So unless Kuo heard something specific, why would this be in his report?

01:15:29 ◼   ► So and it tends to be accurate with this kind of stuff.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So again, I want to believe this is happening.

01:15:35 ◼   ► But, and again, I cannot think of any other, like, why would the iPad Pro need a spec bump in 2019?

01:15:43 ◼   ► If I were to ask you this question, what would the answer be?

01:15:45 ◼   ► And this display comes as the first possible option, because it's 6K and Apple does not want to release a new display that does not support the iPad Pro.

01:15:55 ◼   ► So they can just go out and say, "We have a new display, it works both with the Mac and the iPad, and here you go with new Macs and new iPads."

01:16:04 ◼   ► I don't know. That would be sweet and at the point I'm already... I've been

01:16:10 ◼   ► discussing with Sylvia what happens to this ultrafine that I have. It's 30 inches

01:16:14 ◼   ► too much for the desk that we bought. We'll talk about that again

01:16:20 ◼   ► when the time comes. Do we think that they'll only do one monitor? Steven, do you

01:16:25 ◼   ► think it would just be one size? I think that's just the big boy. If

01:16:31 ◼   ► If they can roll out the faster Thunderbolt 3 quick enough, you know, I think maybe they

01:16:38 ◼   ► do a 5K that supports older Thunderbolt or even USB C, you know, the new 3 point whatever,

01:16:45 ◼   ► 3.2.

01:16:46 ◼   ► So I don't know, I mean, my gut says just one and if it doesn't support your machine

01:16:51 ◼   ► too bad, but…

01:16:53 ◼   ► So there was also some rumors of iPhone changes, so I'm going to read this section from 9to5

01:16:59 ◼   ► report on Ming-Chi Kuo's report. According to Kuo, the 2019 iPhones will feature ultra-wideband

01:17:06 ◼   ► connectivity for indoor positioning and navigation, frosted glass casing, bilateral

01:17:11 ◼   ► wireless charging for charging other devices, so it could basically charge your AirPods from the

01:17:16 ◼   ► iPhone, upgraded Face ID with a higher power flood illuminator, larger batteries and a triple camera

01:17:22 ◼   ► design but Quo doesn't say which phones will get which features exactly. So if

01:17:28 ◼   ► you imagine all of that stuff in an iPhone do you think that this is like a

01:17:33 ◼   ► big enough selection of things to move the needle maybe for people in our lives

01:17:38 ◼   ► that didn't think that the the XS line was big enough change wise? I guess it

01:17:45 ◼   ► depends on what a new camera system would bring in practice.

01:17:52 ◼   ► I cannot imagine the two-way wireless charging being a big deal for folks.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Yes, you will be able to maybe charge your AirPods on top of your phone,

01:18:01 ◼   ► and that's cool, but that's not something that sells a new iPhone.

01:18:04 ◼   ► But a radically new way to take pictures or considerably better

01:18:10 ◼   ► photos. Now that that's something that can sell phones. I also think that a price drop can sell

01:18:18 ◼   ► phones. So I remain convinced that this is something that we said a few episodes ago,

01:18:23 ◼   ► there will be price drops for iPhones in 2019. Right now it doesn't sound so compelling for

01:18:32 ◼   ► people. I mean, I'm gonna get it anyway, but for people who want to see the differences between

01:18:37 ◼   ► each iPhone iteration, I don't think it sounds like a major departure from the X and the XS.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I guess the new material could be something that entices people to upgrade. Again, I

01:18:50 ◼   ► struggle to imagine what that's gonna look like, but my feeling is

01:18:55 ◼   ► X, XS, so I'm talking about the small version of the phone, X, XS, whatever is gonna be called 11,

01:19:03 ◼   ► like the base model doesn't sound so different. Now the max if it has the new camera system now

01:19:09 ◼   ► that could be something to drive people to upgrade to but I don't know. Yeah I think I'm mostly

01:19:19 ◼   ► feeling the same right like these sound like an interesting selection of things to me but it's

01:19:25 ◼   ► definitely back in the kind of incremental camp again which I don't

01:19:32 ◼   ► know if it's easy to forget or whatever but that's kind of how we were for many

01:19:37 ◼   ► years before the 10 right that like it was it was mostly just incremental

01:19:43 ◼   ► updates every year and depending on your own personal set of requirements you

01:19:49 ◼   ► would decide which one of the two was the more important right whether it was

01:19:54 ◼   ► like speed or whatever it was cameras because you know from the 6 onwards it didn't really

01:19:58 ◼   ► change for a long time. I remember that was boring for us. Yes. And we've probably got

01:20:06 ◼   ► maybe this one will still be exciting but then probably the one after that unless Apple

01:20:10 ◼   ► does some big big stuff it's going to be a bit chill again for a few more years I think.

01:20:15 ◼   ► I mean and it's probably because just in general the standard line of smartphones has mostly

01:20:22 ◼   ► become pretty samey. I mean, we mentioned this, but we are recording this at the time

01:20:27 ◼   ► that Samsung has just shown off the first kind of like, really commercial phone.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Galaxy Fold!

01:20:32 ◼   ► So maybe like the Galaxy Fold, like in a few more years, you know, things might get more

01:20:37 ◼   ► exciting again, as there's like new form factors and stuff. But you know, it's pretty, the

01:20:43 ◼   ► iPhone X was incredible, but it will only take a year for it to feel normal. And so

01:20:47 ◼   ► now anything that comes from there is going to be pretty, it's going to feel pretty much

01:20:54 ◼   ► the same for a bit. I mean I will say that this phone sounds more exciting a jump than

01:21:00 ◼   ► the 10 to the 10s did. Like the 10s to this does feel more interesting. Better face ID

01:21:05 ◼   ► would be great, triple camera sounds fun. I don't know what ultra wide band connectivity

01:21:10 ◼   ► gets me, I don't really know what that means. The bilateral charging would be a really nice

01:21:14 ◼   ► especially as AirPods are growing in popularity and I guess we're all assuming that it's AirPods,

01:21:20 ◼   ► that's why they're doing this. So yeah, I think it sounds fun, but it's not huge.

01:21:27 ◼   ► So we already know what the story's going to be, you know, like failing Apple who couldn't

01:21:33 ◼   ► sell enough iPhones don't do enough with their iPhone to sell more iPhones. But that's just how

01:21:38 ◼   ► that's going to go for a bit, probably. Yeah, I mean they've moved into a cycle

01:21:44 ◼   ► that's longer than two years with the design. And if you know, I think people saw the notch

01:21:50 ◼   ► potentially as like a design change, but if it's the new normal, and it lasts as long

01:21:54 ◼   ► as the home button, you know, we have to divorce that from the rest of the design aesthetic

01:21:59 ◼   ► of the phone potentially to consider something new or not. So it's new ground this year,

01:22:04 ◼   ► especially with three phones. So we will, we will see how it goes.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And Ming-Chi Kuo also calls out that there will be an out of power this year after all.

01:22:14 ◼   ► But I still don't buy it.

01:22:15 ◼   ► I still just, I'm still not, I still don't believe it.

01:22:18 ◼   ► It just seems so strange to me still.

01:22:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:21 ◼   ► I don't know about it.

01:22:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:23 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:22:24 ◼   ► If you want to find links to stuff we've talked about, stories we mentioned, you can head

01:22:29 ◼   ► over to the website relay.fm/connected/231.

01:22:35 ◼   ► While you're there, you can get in touch.

01:22:36 ◼   ► There's an email link there in the sidebar.

01:22:38 ◼   ► this feedback follow up via email but that's too old-fashioned for you or you

01:22:43 ◼   ► can do it in less than 280 characters I guess you could do it over on Twitter

01:22:47 ◼   ► you can find Myke there is I M Y K E and Myke is the host of a bunch of shows

01:22:52 ◼   ► here on relay FM so if you like connected it's probably something else

01:22:56 ◼   ► that we do that you would like like as well you can follow it Federico at

01:23:00 ◼   ► Batichi VI T I CC I he is the editor-in-chief of max stories dotnet so

01:23:06 ◼   ► So as these iPad apps come to the Mac, you guys are going to be busy, Federico.

01:23:12 ◼   ► It's going to be a lot of stuff to talk about this year.

01:23:15 ◼   ► You can follow me on Twitter as ISMH and my writing at 512pixels.net.

01:23:21 ◼   ► I thank our three sponsors this week, Pingdom, Luna Display, and Care/Of.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Until next week, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:23:30 ◼   ► Adios.