catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

224: Yearning for Reflection

Our WWDC 2017 predictions and wishes.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

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  • Casper: An obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Use code ATP for $50 toward your mattress.
  • Betterment: Investing made better.

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Follow-up: Remember Aperture?
  2. Follow-up: Keyboard revision?
  3. Sponsor: Betterment
  4. Opening statements
  5. Siri speaker
  6. Sponsor: Jet (code ATP)
  7. Tools and Swift
  8. iOS
  9. macOS
  10. Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
  11. Mac hardware
  12. iPad hardware
  13. tvOS
  14. watchOS
  15. Services
  16. iMessage apps
  17. Closing statements
  18. Ending theme
  19. Post-show: San Jose fashion

Follow-up: Remember Aperture?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the show that will not end. Kuba

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Boguchewicz. Kuba said that Apple used to have many edits

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of one original. This is within the context of photos. Aputure had it and called it versions.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You could have many versions of one master and it worked. This is with regard to what John

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was asking for last episode.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a nice reminder of what we’ve lost. You know, for people who are in

⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple ecosystem and remember the days when Apple had a pro

⏹️ ▶️ John video, pro photo editing app, and then one day they didn’t anymore. And Lightroom is great and you can

⏹️ ▶️ John get it and it’s by Adobe and it’s good that there’s competition in that market. But very often

⏹️ ▶️ John I forget that Aperture even existed. If you had reminded me that Aperture existed, I

⏹️ ▶️ John probably would have remembered this multi-version thing because I did try Aperture a few times, especially when they got like that where it to

⏹️ ▶️ John share its library with iPhoto in some weird way that never really worked quite right.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I kind of miss that. I wish that stuff would come. I wish iPhoto stuff would come back to photos. And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you run out of iPhoto stuff to steal, you can bring stuff from Aperture. Like it’s all in the family. They’ve got that source code.

⏹️ ▶️ John Those people are still there somewhere, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Thanks.

Follow-up: Keyboard revision?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey An anonymous person wrote in and said, I was speaking with an Apple Mac OS engineer,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they said they will or have been making better versions of the new MacBook Pro keyboard and using

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them in newly produced units without any public acknowledgement or change of model number. By implication,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple will also be using these refined keyboards in any MacBook Pro keyboards. They said that this refinement of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey component designs is very common, and they said that it is often good to wait a few months

⏹️ ▶️ Casey after a new product is released so that you can get the revised versions of any components that were found to have had issues

⏹️ ▶️ Casey after

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco release.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why do they

⏹️ ▶️ John have to prove John right? I like the idea of them, you know, modifying the product but not changing

⏹️ ▶️ John the model number. Like just to add an air of mystery, kind of like, oh, these are the good ones. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I know it’s exactly the same part and it looks exactly the same and the model number is the same, but these are the good ones. Like we learned so

⏹️ ▶️ John much about assembling the old ones that we, you know, put magic special dust in it. Like, I mean, they do, you do

⏹️ ▶️ John refine your manufacturing process. Like you refine the assembly, you could even refine some of

⏹️ ▶️ John the materials for the pieces, you could source them from different places. This happens in the manufacturer of any

⏹️ ▶️ John remotely complicated good. And I imagine you don’t always change the model number. But as a consumer,

⏹️ ▶️ John this, this is like telling us what we want to hear, like, if you buy later, they’re better. Like I always believe that voodoo

⏹️ ▶️ John too. And you know, it’s always good to like wait a little bit, even if only from like the the

⏹️ ▶️ John old style, American car battle days of American car manufacturing, where you don’t buy the cars that were

⏹️ ▶️ John assembled on a Friday because the workers don’t care that much. And they just want to go off for the weekend, right? And so they don’t do a good job assembling your

⏹️ ▶️ John car. The idea that after, after some company has been building a thing for some period

⏹️ ▶️ John of time, every part of the process of building it becomes refined and

⏹️ ▶️ John the people slash machine slash whatever get better at building the thing, even if every single

⏹️ ▶️ John part of it is the same. And so you kind of don’t want like the very first PlayStation four

⏹️ ▶️ John off the assembly line. Maybe want the 7,000th or 100,000th

⏹️ ▶️ John versus the first three. But all those are things that are just kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ John modern day folktales I tell myself to make myself feel better about delaying purchases for a small

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of time. It’s kind of the opposite of Margo’s folktales that he tells himself to make himself feel better about buying things immediately. But

⏹️ ▶️ John we

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all have our stories to make us feel

⏹️ ▶️ John to make us feel good about our decisions. Honestly, I would like to believe this.

⏹️ ▶️ John this, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just don’t know. And by the way, in my defense, the MacBook Escape came out in October.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought it in March. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey look at you waiting six months.

⏹️ ▶️ John Which one? The first one or the second one? Because you did order it before it even was shipping to anybody,

⏹️ ▶️ John if I recall. Yes, that’s true. But the one I actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey own, the one that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t cancel and that I let deliver to me, the MacBook Escape, I ordered it in March.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well that’s good, because the one you got, they’ve totally sorted out the sticky keyboard situation.

⏹️ ▶️ John This anonymous person would say, oh, Marco got the last bad one, but now they’re using all these refined ones that have the same model

⏹️ ▶️ John number.

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Opening statements

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, investing made better.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start the show proper. Let’s do what we really need to do. Let’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do what we’ve been waiting on for several months now. Let’s talk about software methodologies.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, why don’t you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco start? I believe in a fully test-driven, agile,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey stand-up parking lot development.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God, stop. Okay, so let’s talk about WWDC. So for some reason you don’t know what we’re talking about. WWDC

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a Worldwide Developer Conference. It is happening next week as we record this in San Jose, California.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey First time that any of us have been to San Jose for WWDC. It did happen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there back in the days before anyone really cared about Apple. Don’t write me. But now we’re coming

⏹️ ▶️ Casey back to San Jose. It’s going to be a new experience for all of us. And there’s a lot to talk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. There’s a lot of stuff going on. And there’s been surprisingly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey little chatter about what’s forthcoming. And I bet you, if you were to listen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to past episodes, I bet you I’ve said that the last several years, but man, sitting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey here now, the way I remember the, the chatter leading up to iOS 10, iOS 9 and 8

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 7, I feel like we knew a lot more about what was going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey into those releases than we do what’s going into, uh, iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, what presumably will be iOS 11. Do you guys feel the same way?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, especially because, I mean, first of all, it’s a little bit weird. Like, we’ve heard a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of kind of like weak second-tier rumors, but very little of much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco credibility or of much certainty. And it seems like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, and the rumors are so spread out and relatively

⏹️ ▶️ Marco diverse in their nature. isn’t all about one product or all about one thing. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s looking like it’s gonna be a pretty, potentially pretty big WBDC,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that nobody can really say for sure exactly why, which is kind of interesting. It’s kind of fun

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way. Like we have a whole bunch of things that we’ve heard might happen, or are supposed to or intended to happen,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe, but really nothing that’s concrete as a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of previous leaks and reports have been.

⏹️ ▶️ John we can make it up in volume like it we had read this no like big spearhead like the one big thing everyone’s

⏹️ ▶️ John looking for in the means where he thinks it’s just a bunch of other things that kind of reminds me uh… maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John this amanda’s remember what was that i was eight the year i was a it was announced they now sells all

⏹️ ▶️ John those features that we thought would never come to i was and there was you know no one of them was

⏹️ ▶️ John a uh… you know the thing that we all about but just the fact that there were so many things and i was

⏹️ ▶️ John eight that i was so desperately needed in the all came that it would give you gave you the satisfaction of sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John being overwhelmed with the sheer number of things that Apple was doing to improve its product.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we would all like that, right? But the problem with these big laundry lists where there’s no one thing, it’s just a bunch of other

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, is it’s not all going to be there. Like we’ve heard rumors of everything. They can’t possibly all be there.

⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s going to be some disappointments mixed in, depending on what you care about the most mixed

⏹️ ▶️ John in with the other stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s go through this. Somebody has done a little bit of preparation in the show notes. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey since I don’t know who it is, and it couldn’t possibly have been Marco, that by process of elimination means it must have been John,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who shouldn’t be doing any prep or research, ahem.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I haven’t noticed I fill this document before every single show. You think elves do that? Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but yeah, oh, yes, I did. I thought it was the Keebler elves when they were done baking.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But anyway, you should now honor my organization here, because what I have written

⏹️ ▶️ John as the heading for the section that we’re getting into here is says WWDC hopes and dreams.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because as Marco pointed out, the rumors are all kind of wishy washy, like they’ll probably do some

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS stuff, man, like, All right, yeah, okay. I’m not, I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John that interested in predictions, because if there’s one big thing, we’d be like, are they gonna introduce

⏹️ ▶️ John the hoverboards or not? It’s been super heavily rumored. Let’s talk about the hoverboards. Right? Instead,

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s what do we want or what do we think Apple should do in each of

⏹️ ▶️ John these areas? And obviously we’ll talk about predictions in terms of handicapping them, how they go, but I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John ill-equipped this year to offer any kind of prediction about what

⏹️ ▶️ John will be announced at WWDC, but I feel reasonably well-equipped to talk about what I would like

⏹️ ▶️ John to see and then secondarily what I think Apple should do. And then, like I said, inevitably we’ll say, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John could they possibly do this?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we’re going to start and we’re going to go through software and then we’ll go through hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then we’ll go through, I don’t know, kind of miscellaneous stuff. Can I offer an opening statement?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, since you seem eager to, then please

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John proceed. Well, John did.

⏹️ ▶️ John Someone’s ready for the incomparable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that’s way too intimidating. Basically, I slightly disagree with the hopes and dreams

⏹️ ▶️ Marco angle of this. I have kind of prepared my expectations to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that I would like to happen but that I also think will happen, things that are realistic, that are plausible, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit within Apple’s recent… Hopes and dreams

⏹️ ▶️ John fits within that. I’m not saying you want a hoverboard or you want them to roll the car out on the stage and do a donut. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re all going to be within the realm of reason here, I think. That was implied. That wasn’t clear.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I do think, before we get into specifics, I would say the general

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trend I expect this year, what I’m pretty sure will happen, like overarching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco themes, the most powerful messages that are being delivered. I think we’re going to have a very heavy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco focus on Siri, first and foremost. It’s going to take all sorts of different forms, which we’ll get to down

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the road. But heavy focus on Siri, also a heavy focus on iPad productivity,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of integrated with that, iCloud Drive. Then I think secondarily,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see things like the iOS potential redesign. I think the Mac is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be kind of mid-range priority, and then relatively quiet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco years for watchOS and tvOS. But really heavy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco focus everywhere on Siri, number one, and then iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco productivity and iCloud Drive, kind of number two.

⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re predicting that, but since you’re just talking about overall theme, do you also

⏹️ ▶️ John hope for that? And secondarily, do you think that’s what Apple should be focusing on?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it depends. I mean, you know, this is not only is this like, you know, here’s all the cool stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we’ve made this year. But, you know, like every Apple event and like every Apple launch,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a certain degree of marketing strategy that goes into how they present things, what they even present at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, what they name things, how things are structured and I think Apple is facing a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very very strong competitive force right now on the voice assistant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco front from both Google and Amazon and maybe even Microsoft that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know Siri has been criticized for being behind most of it rightfully so in various areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here also you know Apple doesn’t yet have a like a Siri

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cylinder slash standalone speaker thing and we’ll get to that because that’s rumored to possibly be announced this this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week or next week I guess so that might happen but anyway it just seems like Siri is an area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in which kind of the the current trend of the tech sphere that Apple operates in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like the hot thing to be working on is to have really awesome voice assistant stuff and Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is widely perceived mostly fairly as being behind in that area so I expect this to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be kind of like the way last year Apple was perceived to be behind in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco machine learning, AI, big data kind of problems. And so last year, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard them say machine learning like a billion times. They named everything machine learning. They bragged about how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome their machine learning was. It was a hugely driven home talking point and it was everything was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of marketed around their version of saying, we are doing machine learning in this awesome way and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s why and here’s how we’re doing it and look at all the machine learning we’re doing. Similarly, I, that’s what I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri is going to be this year. It’s going to be like the overall theme of basically everything being called

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri, just like last year where everything was called machine learning, you know, everything’s going to be named Siri,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even features that aren’t necessarily what we think of a Siri today. So like, like maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe spotlight will be renamed to Siri. Maybe search in mail or messages

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be renamed to Siri. You know, who knows? Like there could be a lot of angles to this. I actually think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s possible that HomeKit will be renamed to Siri. So you would just say things like, this light

⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch works with Siri. You know, like I think that’s a, there’s a big chance of stuff like this happening. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri is what Apple is going to be beating us over the head with this year. This is going to be like the talking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco point theme of the year. And they’re going to be all about how awesome Siri is, how far they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco come, and how incredibly more advanced it is than everything else out there.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re going to be throwing machine learning out of some more. I don’t think machine learning is day and the sun is over like in addition to Siri,

⏹️ ▶️ John like Oh, here’s the thing about the Siri focus that, you know, this was getting at with like, do you is this something you want

⏹️ ▶️ John to see and do something you think they should do? Well, so by saying they’re behind and I agree, or

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re both perceived to be behind, I actually are a little behind a lot of these areas. It’s something they should

⏹️ ▶️ John do. If they’re actually concerned with keeping up with the Joneses very many times in history, Apple seems totally

⏹️ ▶️ John unconcerned with doing the same thing as other companies, its competitors are doing in this situation,

⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple was pretty early out of the gate with Syria, it’s not like they just didn’t touch this area at all. They’re in

⏹️ ▶️ John it like they they’re in that market of like smart assistant thing that you talk to and they were in it very early

⏹️ ▶️ John and they have a brand and so on and so forth. So I think it’s a situation where they can’t say, Oh, Apple’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John interested in that market market like or will enter when we think there’s something they’re already there, right? They’re just behind.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if they can, if they can have a Siri focus, I think it is something they should and can

⏹️ ▶️ John if they can means do they have the API’s and new you know, software things

⏹️ ▶️ John to do? Do they have Siri in a tube or you know, like, you have to have something behind it. You can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John just sort of float on Oh, we’ve made Siri a little bit better. And here’s some demos, you have to have something you have to have new API’s

⏹️ ▶️ John is WWDC, new ways for apps to integrate it. A new product would be awesome, right? And rebranding,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’m not sure they’re going to ditch homekit in that way. And I don’t think they care enough about the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John to rebrand any part of it to with Siri. I mean, you know, Apple Mac OS just got Siri recently.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like be happy for a couple years Mac OS will pay attention to you later. We’ll get there. Yeah, I think it

⏹️ ▶️ John is. I think it is something they should do. And I and I think it’s also something

⏹️ ▶️ John that I would want to see them do because I like you know, all of us except for Casey,

⏹️ ▶️ John the the holdout have cylinders in our houses that we talked to. And I still occasionally

⏹️ ▶️ John talk to Siri on my phone and other things like that. And I would love for Siri to get better. And I would love for there

⏹️ ▶️ John to be other products and other API’s that incorporate Siri, like I said, last show, I would like to talk to overcast and have it

⏹️ ▶️ John play things for me. So that kind of Siri can integration with that kind of intent would be great as well. So

⏹️ ▶️ John that theme, you know, and again, this is not we haven’t delved into the specifics. We’re just saying broadly speaking, iOS, Mac OS

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware, software, Siri, machine learning, that type of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s maybe not my biggest hope, well, you know, hopes and dreams for it, but it is plausible. It

⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing I think they should do, and I hope they do do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we might as well actually finish the Siri segment now, because I think… How are you getting away

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with this? John usually stomps all over us if we don’t follow the show to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John this.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, because he framed it correctly as a broad… It cuts across all these things. We’re not talking about just iOS or just

⏹️ ▶️ John macOS or just hardware or just new products. It’s an overall theme. He framed it well with his opening statement.

⏹️ ▶️ John The overall theme of the show, if you come away, you know… And it is kind of a prediction, but I’ve brought it back

⏹️ ▶️ John to is it something you hope for? And is it something that you think they should do?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Since I sort of have the mic now, I will say that Siri does not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do much for me either way. It doesn’t actively make me angry terribly often, although that certainly happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it doesn’t actively help my day terribly often, although that also certainly happens. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now, I’m pretty uninterested in all of this. That being said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if history tells me anything. Anytime I tell you that I am completely underwhelmed and uninterested

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in something, which may or may not also be me being nonplussed about something, depending

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on who

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you ask,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I always end up becoming the world’s biggest fan. For example, would you wait one moment while I check the time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my beloved Apple Watch? So we’ll see what happens if they do release a syrian a canister

⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh but sitting here now i just don’t care not a bit

Siri speaker

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So let’s talk about the Siri in a canister, because this is very heavily rumored.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really does seem like, not only is this a real product, but that this really might be announced next week. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what the current, you know, most common rumors are saying. So first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, let’s assume for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing is real. I’m gonna call it the Siri speaker for now, because like I don’t even know if it’s gonna be cylindrical

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shape. You know, like if it’s gonna have a screen, a cylinder doesn’t really make a lot of sense, so it might not be cylindrical,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows. So I’ll call it the Siri speaker. Although I do think that there’s actually a small chance,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like kind of a long shot, that it might be Beats branded. But I think probably not. I think Siri is the stronger

⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand for them and they’re gonna wanna use that here. Or at least that’s the one that they want to drive more.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, the way I picture this product, if you think through, like, how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would you do things like configure apps on it? What kind of apps would there even be on it? How would you set

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up? What would manage it? The way that the Amazon family of products does this is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a Lady in the Tube named app on your phone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not that different from Apple’s Watch app on the iPhone. So it’s like the companion app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the hardware product, which means this hardware product would need to be paired with an iPhone. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I think Apple’s gonna do with this product. I suspect that it’s gonna be like, there’s going to be a Siri

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, much like the Amazon Lady Name app. And this will be like the centralized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco control panel. And I do think this is kind of just gonna be iOS in general. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna be able to access the Siri app for other things as well. Like that could be a centralized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco control panel for HomeKit devices, which might be renamed Siri devices. Any kind of integrations,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, et cetera. I expect that to also then be, you know, just like the Watch app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for the Watch. that’ll be how you manage apps and configuration, you know advanced configuration

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the Siri speaker device. Because if you have like a small, you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably gonna be like a small OLED screen on there. And it probably will be a touch screen and everything, but it’s probably gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be too small and not that great for things like a full keyboard. I don’t think it’s gonna be that size screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably gonna be more like small status displays, maybe for things like timers, and maybe room

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a few buttons, like a few big touch targets on screen, not like, you know, probably bigger than a watch, but smaller

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than a phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John What makes you think it’ll have a screen at all? Have you read more recent rumors than I have?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but most of the rumors have said it will have a screen, so I’m inclined to believe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it will. I also, having used the Amazon cylinders without

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens all this time, I do think it would be nicer with a screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some basic tasks. There’s still, There’s still like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the primary interface will still be voice, but it’s nice to have a screen as a secondary

⏹️ ▶️ Marco information output device or an ambient information output device. So for things like watching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a timer countdown or displaying the weather all the time or things like that, it’s nice to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a screen for things like that. I don’t know if they’re going to go full-blown like video screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for video calls the way Amazon has. I don’t know about that because that whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea kind of makes not that much sense to me. It’s kind of ungraceful and I don’t know. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not sure I see Apple, even though they already have FaceTime and everything, I’m not sure I see them doing the video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco call market with this device because they already have it on all their other devices. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do suspect that they’re going to have an iPhone companion app named Siri that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will encompass all this stuff, probably even replace what is now called the Home app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’ll be just like the new home app. Now it’s called Siri and it encompasses all this stuff and it lets you manage your Siri cylinder.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expect the Siri cylinder to be primarily sold on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco privacy, the screen itself, and being good because it will be the first screen, one of these things to market

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably, or at least it’ll be close to Amazon’s that’s coming out at the end of this month.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also expect Apple to push sound quality hard. Apple still has big foothold

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in music and they have a lot of people there who care about music and frankly it wouldn’t be that hard to sound better than the Echo.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I expect them to push sound quality hard. It is totally possible to sound

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good in a small enclosure and I know that because I have a Sonos Play 1 speaker right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco next to my Echo that I hardly ever use anymore because it’s so much less convenient. But the Play 1

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is almost the same size as the Echo and it sounds way better. It’s not even close.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I know Apple would have the expertise to develop something really good sounding in that size class if they want to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they probably do want to because that could be a great selling point. I would also suggest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is also Apple and this is also Tim Cook’s Apple. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is almost no chance it was going to be just one of these. It’s probably going to be like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like the Amazon one with the screen is like 230 bucks, something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing the cheapest one you can buy from Apple is 300, maybe even more,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that that’s not gonna be the one anybody wants to buy. That there’s gonna be upsell models. Maybe there’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like different materials, different colors, probably there’re gonna be things like bigger or differently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco specced speakers, you know, like, and that’s what Sonos does. They have like the small ones, medium, big ones, and the big ones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really expensive. Maybe they’ll even go as far as to have different storage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tiers like the Apple TV, but that was kind of my comedy option. I don’t actually believe they’re going to do that. I hope they don’t, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the actual storage tiers on the actual Apple TV are a comedy option that make no sense.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I hope they’ve learned, and I hope they don’t do that here. But I’m guessing like roughly 300 bucks for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a base model, but the one you’re going to actually want is going to be more than that for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some premium reason, probably better speakers or something like that. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco otherwise I think, you know, this, you know, if it runs, it would make sense for it to run apps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the way they would probably do that is very similar to how the watch is doing it. So the iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app would be the host slash container, and it would have a special extension

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that runs on the Siri speaker. And that the companion app would manage that relationship for you if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to install or delete them, but that it would be an iOS extension that is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running on the phone, it’s running on the speaker, but it’s managed by the parent app on the phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and by the companion app. And then my only other kind of long shot on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, obviously they’re gonna heavily push Apple Music and music is gonna be, I think, one of the biggest selling points of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing. I think long shot number two, besides that the Beats brand, is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might even pull a Sonos and attack them head on and do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multi-room audio from day one, which currently Amazon doesn’t do it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all yet. I know Google announced they were going to, but have they actually shipped that yet? I don’t have the famous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. John, you’re in charge of Google Home on this show.

⏹️ ▶️ John I only have one of them, why would I know?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, get a second one and then answer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the question. All right. So yeah, I think it would be really cool if Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did Sonos multi-room audio. Now that I’ve had a Sonos system for a couple of years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do really enjoy that. It’s really nice to have speakers in multiple rooms of your house. So when you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing things around the house, you can have the same music playing in all of them. It’s really nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the main reason I don’t use that anymore is because it’s so much more convenient to have everything voice controlled. So if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple can combine those things, Amazon, I’m kind of surprised they haven’t, but they haven’t. So if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple can be the first one to combine those things, and if they’re gonna have a heavy music focus, and if they’re gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have good speakers in these things to begin with, that could be a really strong competitive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco advantage because they’re probably not gonna be as strong with the voice accuracy or the reliability

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the speed or the third-party integrations. So they can try to get advantages in other areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple is strong. So things like physical design, the UI of the thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound quality, multi-room audio, major music integration. That’s where I expect Apple to go with this.

⏹️ ▶️ John You have such a specific vision of this entire ecosystem of products. It makes me think you have inside information

⏹️ ▶️ John that we don’t have.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So here’s the thing, I don’t. That’s a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of specifics. That’s a lot of specifics.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but I don’t, but what I basically did was I started writing out this note of like, what I expect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing might be. And I started thinking about, okay, well, it doesn’t run apps. If it runs apps,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where do the apps come from? And once you’re thinking through, like how might they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, every one of those things sounds like, yeah, that’s exactly the way they would do it if they were doing that.

⏹️ ▶️ John But what I have trouble with is, you just listed out, if they were to catch up with everybody on all fronts at once, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is how they’d do it, and I agree. I’m pessimistic that they are going

⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. like, and I know what I’m thinking of is all things you described, it’s like, okay,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not going to get all this stuff with the first product, it’s going to concentrate on one area or another. So for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John one angle could be, again, if this thing is even announced WWC, multi room audio, no

⏹️ ▶️ John screen series speaker, right? That alone seems like a version one product

⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple, like none of the other things you mentioned are there, there’s no screen, there’s no apps, there’s no, you know, HomeKit,

⏹️ ▶️ John central home hub thing, there’s no, know, you know, it’s just it’s just Siri speaker, you can talk to it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s multi room audio. And that’s it. And they’re expensive in this two of them, right? I’m on board with that. Or

⏹️ ▶️ John it could be a home hub thing, but then no multi room audio, but just like one good speaker in the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or it could be a little app platform thing that isn’t a speaker. But that you know, it’s like, I have trouble

⏹️ ▶️ John making myself believe that today’s Apple is going to come out of the gate with something so comprehensive. But

⏹️ ▶️ John well, if they did, like I agree with you that if they if they did attack on all those fronts, that’s probably how they

⏹️ ▶️ John would attack on every single one of those fronts because it’s based on, you know, something they’ve done before, technology they

⏹️ ▶️ John already have, things they’re already good at, and enhancements to things that they, you know, obviously, we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John obviously assuming enhancements to Siri to go along with this to make it more capable just in general, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but what I’m describing is a smaller scale than the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first version of the Apple Watch. And it’s way easier to make because it’s this big chunky thing. the

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Watch was so incredibly hyped and rumored that it was like the, you know, and

⏹️ ▶️ John it just, the Apple Watch came out and it did do all those things all at once. But the lead up to

⏹️ ▶️ John it matched that like it was not, I mean, they, what they built that whole temporary thing

⏹️ ▶️ John and had this giant special event for it. And we all knew it was coming. It was just like, and what is it going to be? Is it going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be a holographic wrist thing that floats on it? Like it was just, it was out of control. Right. And they did

⏹️ ▶️ John do a really good job on it. And you know, they figured out the software eventually too. But the series, Siri stuff is like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if Apple will ever have a tube thing. Yeah, maybe. Oh, I hear it might be WWC. Maybe we’ll have a screen. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John it won’t. Probably have a speaker. Cool. Like, like it’s getting back to like the scope of like, Apple can make a really good

⏹️ ▶️ John Bluetooth speaker as I think I said a couple of shows ago. It’s like, yeah, they could. If they felt like it,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And you’re like, no, Apple can dominate this whole market by doing everything super awesome way and just charging

⏹️ ▶️ John us twice as much.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that because there are going to be major areas of this that Apple’s not to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive on because it’s all based on Siri. And there are major areas that Siri isn’t competitive on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Things like speed, reliability, and certain levels of intelligence. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John and again, like the underlying premise is that this comes along with a new and improved version

⏹️ ▶️ John of Siri. Like that Siri in this tube is better than Siri in all other places. And it’s an interesting question

⏹️ ▶️ John of whether, say they even do that. Oh, I don’t believe that at all. I think it’s going to be exactly the same Siri. You think so?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, at the very least, I would hope that it would hear me better than the microphones in a watch or in the phone just because they’ve got more

⏹️ ▶️ John room for more microphones

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Well

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might but honestly I don’t have much problem with Siri hearing me properly like the words

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I say are usually transcribed very accurately it’s what they do afterwards that’s that’s usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I have some trouble with activations but yeah but like on the Siri tube

⏹️ ▶️ John speaker screen whatever thing I’m currently filing this in

⏹️ ▶️ John the category of a thing that I totally believe Apple has worked on and may still be working on

⏹️ ▶️ John but that I would not shock me if there was no

⏹️ ▶️ John dedicated serial related hardware announced at WWDC. So I’m not I’m not pinning my hopes

⏹️ ▶️ John on this being a WWDC even if it’s a thing they’re working on even if they are going to ship it later.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know like just think of the Apple TV that missed WWDC remember when that happened like the new

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV and were gonna have it for everybody. And it just it didn’t quite make it right. So this I’m putting in that this in that

⏹️ ▶️ John bin right now, which would be a shame. But looking down the list of the rest of the things, I still feel like they would have enough stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John to make a good keynote without any serious stuff. And if they did have it,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, would they save it for the end? Is that is that the biggest announcement that they save towards the you know, the end

⏹️ ▶️ John slot where the good stuff comes like they obviously like, lead with like watch OS and Mac OS updates, then build

⏹️ ▶️ John up to the stuff that we really care about, right. And this is the last thing, I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll find out. But anyway, that’s how I feel about this here thing in terms of predictions, that it will be

⏹️ ▶️ John more constrained than all the things that Marco listed, and that I would not be shocked if it didn’t appear. And I’m not gonna,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I wouldn’t, and honestly, if everything else comes out, everything else has reasonably good announcements of

⏹️ ▶️ John fulfilling some of my hopes and dreams, I’ll be okay with that.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so I’m sorry, boss. What are we doing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right now? iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS. Because we’re going for the biggest, I feel like now, because Marco wanted to go right for the dessert and talk about the Siri, which is like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the new hardware, new product category, like the most, probably the most exciting thing that could be announced

⏹️ ▶️ John at WWDC. You know, introducing a new product category that Apple wasn’t in before, a thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John rarely happens. one and I feel like iOS is the next biggest possible announcement

⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s a lot of a lot of rumors and ideas around

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS not just improving its capabilities, improving capabilities of the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, adding features that people have wanted and like getting back on the bandwagon of advancing

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS, but also the possibility that that major

⏹️ ▶️ John foundational interface paradigms in iOS could be rethought, like particularly about

⏹️ ▶️ John how how applications deal with files and drag and drop, which drag and drop is

⏹️ ▶️ John like not at all. And files is in in a way that is

⏹️ ▶️ John not like the old way where there was no access to the file system, but it’s kind of this awkward middle ground. So there’s a lot of rumors

⏹️ ▶️ John surrounding that. And again, when we say file system, we don’t mean like the literal file system, which is a PFS now,

⏹️ ▶️ John yay. But like, in terms of file management, there’s a lot of rumors about that. And

⏹️ ▶️ John any and all of those things are significant for iOS. And most of it, I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John is focused on sort of the high end of iOS, the devices that are big and fast and have a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of memory, not so much on your phones, like what is this going to do about your phones

⏹️ ▶️ John more about like, hey, I’ve got this big, powerful 12.5 inch iPad Pro

⏹️ ▶️ John with the stylus. But multitasking hasn’t changed much in many years. And there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John no drag and drop. And dealing with files is still kind of a pain. And for many

⏹️ ▶️ John years, there have been rumors about that being rejiggered. But this certainly seems like the year

⏹️ ▶️ John when the announcement kind of like iOS eight, where the announcements for iOS will be things that

⏹️ ▶️ John have been a long time coming that are super impressive that people look at and say, a this is going to change how

⏹️ ▶️ John I use my iOS device in a positive way. And developers are gonna say, B, I can’t wait to add support for that for my

⏹️ ▶️ John application, which is a perfect fit for WWDC. iOS is the glory OS, and they can

⏹️ ▶️ John start adding, for lack of a better word, pro features to iOS, the crowd will love

⏹️ ▶️ John it, developers will love it, users will love it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know what to make of all that. I was asked by a friend of the show, Stephen Hackett, to do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a piece for his members newsletter. And so I wrote a piece that I’ll eventually post

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my website, but probably not for a few weeks about why I think that the iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the iOS, geez, the iPad is not for me anymore. And since

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just made this public declaration that the iPad is not for me anymore, I expect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that whatever is done at WWDC this year will make me go crawling directly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey back to the iPad and tell everyone about how I never doubted the iPad and the iPad has always been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing for me. I think it’s obvious that this is going to be a year that’s heavy on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad. I think it’s possible that Federico Vaticci’s smile may not fit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the doors

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco on the way out of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey keynote, which to be, to truth be told, is a good thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t dislike the iPad. I just feel like I’m neutered or not neutered maybe, but handcuffed is a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better word for it, handcuffed by it. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if a lot of the pain points that I have when using

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad went away, that would be really great. But to come back to the ostensible

⏹️ ▶️ Casey point of all this, which is hopes and dreams, I do hope and dream for a better Siri

⏹️ ▶️ Casey API. I think it would be somewhat useful for what I do at my day job,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think it would be super useful for things like Overcast. been many times that I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to say, you know, Hey Dingus, play, I don’t know, Fatal Error

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, in Overcast or something like that. Or, you know, Hey Dingus, play Dubai Friday in Overcast and,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and having the ability to do that would be really, really awesome. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little disappointed that Swift is open source in that,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as far as I know, a lot of the things that I want from Swift aren’t happening because if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were happening, I would know them because open source. And so I’m hopeful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that maybe some stuff has been happening behind the scenes that is Swift specific.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been yearning for reflection. I’ve been yearning for async await. There’s a bunch of other things that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve wanted that I can’t think of off the top of my head, but every indication is that I’m not getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of those things because if I was, I would know about it because open source. However, that being said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, any improvements to Xcode to make writing Swift a little better to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey make using Swift a little better would be great. And I know that’s tangentially

⏹️ ▶️ Casey related to iOS, but that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is very, very tangentially.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, I’m gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know, I rang you in, but I will allow you to make the bold prediction that there will be a new version of

⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode and that’s a WWDC.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no, no, no. But I mean, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to see, like, as an example, they added, I forget the official term for the feature,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but like the memory graph visualizer. And they added, you know, the reveal

⏹️ ▶️ Casey clone, which is also excellent. And those are great. But that’s that’s that’s sort of a change

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not what I’m looking for. What I’m looking for is something that makes writing Swift

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better and easier, like being able to refactor Swift code, like fact that we can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do that is kind of preposterous now. And I’ve been talking to some people at work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about Kotlin, about some of these other languages, about the way.NET matured.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you look at the differences in.NET over the same stretch of time as Swift has had,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like C Sharp, but maybe I should use C Sharp rather than.NET, C Sharp moved way,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way quicker. And I wish that Swift could pick up the pace a little bit, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey funny because maybe the only way for them to to pick up the pace a little bit might be to take away some of the community

⏹️ ▶️ Casey involvement and make it more dictatorial rather than democratic. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I digress. The point I’m driving

⏹️ ▶️ John it I don’t think it’s gonna go faster. You really think C sharp moved faster? Like did it did it have backwards incompatible

⏹️ ▶️ John syntax changes as rapidly as swifted because I feel like that was unprecedented.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I mean, it generally it was additive anytime that that C sharp I mean, it wasn’t always But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally, my recollection is it was always additive. And there were always humongous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey features in pretty much every version. I don’t remember the exact history offhand, but 1.1 didn’t have generics.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then 2.0 had generics. That’s when the language actually got usable. I forget what 3.0 brought,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but then you had link, and then you had async await. And so there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John been consistent… But you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John up to… Swift is in the three to four stage now, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking in terms of equivalent calendar time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John though. And maybe I’m misremembering. Maybe I’m wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ John to check those calendar dates, because I think actually, so it has been moving pretty quickly. And I think it took a long time for C sharp.

⏹️ ▶️ John Check, check the timelines.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I feel like C sharp

⏹️ ▶️ John moved at a similar rate, but didn’t break syntax as much and went for longer

⏹️ ▶️ John until it got certainly before until it got a single weight, and maybe even before it got link.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t remember off the top of my head when link came out. But it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is always been, to my eyes, moving quicker than

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than than Swift. So link was released as a major part of dotnet three five in oh

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seven. So the 2000 2001 ish was dotnet 11. Two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John years,

⏹️ ▶️ John Swift hasn’t been out for six years.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. That’s fair point.

⏹️ ▶️ John It may it seems it seems more compressed because in the past and maybe IDs sure is coming along better. But yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s true. Yeah. So I expect obviously, there to be new version

⏹️ ▶️ John code and you know some of those things that you talked about feel like they should be coming around this time as

⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple turns the the giant ship that is its dev tools division slowly but surely over a multi-year

⏹️ ▶️ John period entirely towards Swift still no ABI compatibility like we’re still waiting

⏹️ ▶️ John on

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that but that’s as

⏹️ ▶️ John many people point out every time everything is up is more of a concern for Apple than it is for developers people say who don’t mind shipping

⏹️ ▶️ John slightly larger than normal applications which I guess is everybody judging by the App Store but things like

⏹️ ▶️ John refactoring and other features that like aren’t available for Swift but have

⏹️ ▶️ John been available in some limited form for Objective-C or seem like they’ll be reasonably

⏹️ ▶️ John easy to do given that the entire ID is built on the same compiler platform as the language and

⏹️ ▶️ John so on so forth that yeah I expect people to be happy with with the

⏹️ ▶️ John features they get there but honestly it seems to me from looking at those public mailing lists and everything

⏹️ ▶️ John that there is still a pretty big emphasis on the basics

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, compile quickly, correctly without crashing,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John that type

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ John that maybe they’re still not quite in a position to start giving you all the frills that you want. And that’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ John the best place for them to be concentrating. You know, they’re, they’re getting more serious about source compatibility now.

⏹️ ▶️ John And every developer there wants their thing to compile in a sane amount of time, and they don’t want the compiler to crash. And they don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John there to be bugs. And we’re kind of we’re coming out of that phase or swift slowly,

⏹️ ▶️ John but surely, and maybe they’ll have some things to brag about, like, look, I don’t know, they don’t brag about how many times I so crashes,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they will brag about compile times. Hey, look, you enable whole module optimization and compile this big project and it was

⏹️ ▶️ John garbage in the past version. But the new WWDC beta version is like 10 times faster and everybody cheers. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John always a crowd pleaser, WWDC, compile times.

iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in terms of like iOS directly, shrug, I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like there’s nothing I can think of that I can point to that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really grinds my gears on a daily basis. And I think that’s largely because I don’t use

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad very much at all.

⏹️ ▶️ John So do you think, so you know, if you’re not an iPad user or we’re setting aside the iPad where we think Apple needs

⏹️ ▶️ John to do stuff and they will do stuff, I think that if they’re rethinking how

⏹️ ▶️ John applications deal with and share their data, not the drag and drop business, because

⏹️ ▶️ John like on a phone, you know, you still just got one app on the screen at the same time, probably, although who knows what the hell they’ll do with the giant phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if they change how apps deal with data, that could surface itself

⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone. I’m trying to think if that would, if that would change something about how how we use the phone,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Like, because that wouldn’t be a paradigm that only changes in the iPad, it would change everywhere

⏹️ ▶️ John across iOS and if they have a good idea about how to do it that would change the way we all

⏹️ ▶️ John use our phones in some small way I imagine maybe even God I don’t know like I was trying to think of like what

⏹️ ▶️ John do we do with our phones we deal with photos a lot but we don’t deal with them as files we deal with them as these abstract things

⏹️ ▶️ John so yeah I’m also struggling to think of any specific thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John they desperately need to do on the phone specifically to iOS but I’m sure there will be something and you know

⏹️ ▶️ John obviously you know neat new small features, performance improvements, bug

⏹️ ▶️ John fixes, all sorts of stuff like that, but we’re not really counting those. But yeah, I feel like this will

⏹️ ▶️ John be a pro year for iOS, if all the rumors to be believed, and it should be because

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s where iOS needs the most attention.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I would say that all the rumblings we’ve heard about the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad productivity enhancements do sound very plausible. I think a lot of it could come to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone. Some of the stuff like side-by-side multitasking obviously won’t be coming from the phone in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all likelihood, but they could do drag and drop. What if they did some kind of thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is just totally random that I just thought of right now, but what if they did some kind of thing where if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco force pressed on a selected piece of content, say, then you got something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like what Xposay on the Mac is where it kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of zooms out to a grid of the last couple of most recently used apps and you you can drop it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto one of them and then that pops in and you can drop on onto a specific part of the app. There are ways to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it on the phone. I’m not saying they will do this or this may even be a terrible idea. I just thought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it now so I haven’t thought this through so it could be terrible. But they could totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do drag and drop and inter-app communication

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and data sharing without actually having side-by-side multitasking where the screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is too small like on the iPhone. So I wouldn’t rule that out. But I would just say like in general,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m very excited to see if the rumors are to be believed here, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco elevation of iCloud Drive probably into like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktop or the documents folder for iOS. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a really, I think since the dawn of iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there has been this constant fight with an apple probably from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’ve heard spearheaded by Steve Jobs personally and possibly even for stall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of that line of thought of trying to get rid of having to deal with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco files. They have worked so hard to get rid of files because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco files are the old way of doing things and people find them confusing and whatever else whatever else they have files have problems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like everything else. But I think what we found over the years is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people people understand files better than Apple gave them credit for, and that so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of work that people do on computing devices really comes down to dealing with files.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And no matter what you try to do with the app model, with having these little containers that the apps work,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we use their own data. It’s kind of like file lists architecture, or that you kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hide the files in these little dark places like the document picker that we have now. and you kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reluctantly deal with files as the system. I think what we found

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over these eight or whatever years that we’ve had the iPad, that we’ve had iOS, 10 years, wow,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco geez, been a long time. No, 11, oh my God.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, all these years that we’ve had iOS, I think what we found is that files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are here to stay, that we can reduce the ways we deal with files, we can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco design apps that don’t need to deal with files, And maybe that should even be the default way most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps are designed, depending on what they do, but that we can’t get rid of files, that they’re here

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to stay, that people use them, that they aren’t necessarily even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad. Like for many types of work, that is less bad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the alternatives that we’ve been trying to try and to shove down people’s throats for the last decade. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe this is finally the time when Apple has finally embraced files on iOS because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything they’ve done prior to this has really not been that it’s really been like reluctant, you know, back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco alley stuff. Now, like, they, from what we if, if what we’ve heard is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all true, it sounds like they have finally taken the step of making

⏹️ ▶️ Marco files easier to work with an iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s definitely the rumor. But I feel like they already took a big step in that direction when they

⏹️ ▶️ John when they adopted a modified version of the Dropbox model with iCloud Drive like that was

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that was the big

⏹️ ▶️ John change that was kind of not that I agree that it didn’t solve the problem in the same way but that was the turning point I

⏹️ ▶️ John feel like where you could see from the outside you could see aha inside the company the argument

⏹️ ▶️ John that you just described like the supposed jobs for stall position totally against files

⏹️ ▶️ John that the tide had turned right now obviously they couldn’t come out at that point and say oh we’ve revamped the entire way we deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with files and iOS like that. It took a while and a lot of these things by the way, a lot of the iOS rumored things. A lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of them are like, oh, that was almost ready for iOS 10. It didn’t quite make it like that they have been

⏹️ ▶️ John a long time coming. Some of them could have in theory almost made it to iOS 10. But they have just you know, they

⏹️ ▶️ John missed releases. And so they’ve built up and so now it’s all landing now but iCloud Drive did come out it came out to the Mac and iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it did change away a lot of applications you do with things and you mentioned like the Dropbox picker, which that that was something

⏹️ ▶️ John unheard of in the early days of iOS. So this could be like the coming out party for a strategy

⏹️ ▶️ John that was embarked upon multiple years ago. And now finally, you know, comes to fruition.

⏹️ ▶️ John And in terms of the files, like, every time I think about different ways of dealing with files that are not actual files,

⏹️ ▶️ John or not actual file system and stuff like that, I think a little bit about Google’s

⏹️ ▶️ John take on this, which I know is different, because all their stuff is in the cloud. But the the different what’s the difference between files and

⏹️ ▶️ John documents like, well, there’s, you know, there’s not really any difference, like, it’s just alternate ways of viewing the same thing. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the way Google is pretty relentless about dealing with documents

⏹️ ▶️ John and documents that are organized into things that look like little folders. But at no point are there anything. Is there

⏹️ ▶️ John any abstraction that is identifiable as a file really? I mean, even when they give you like a list view, like

⏹️ ▶️ John in experience, my experience using Google Docs and Google Sheets and all that Google presentations and Google Drive

⏹️ ▶️ John at work with a bunch of other people, seeing how other people both talk about and deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with documents, Google Documents is subtly different than

⏹️ ▶️ John how they talk about and deal with files, because we do have shared drives with

⏹️ ▶️ John files and everything. I’m not sure one way is better than the other, but Google has made a pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John convincing case for me that dealing with things like documents,

⏹️ ▶️ John even with awkward, weird, shareable URLs, but that URLs that still work even

⏹️ ▶️ John if you quote unquote move the documents to a different quote unquote folder like it’s weird. It’s like this weird

⏹️ ▶️ John half measure that I don’t think is appropriate for iOS. But it shows me that there is that it is possible

⏹️ ▶️ John to have a middle path that people find at least as usable and in some

⏹️ ▶️ John aspects better than the old way of dealing with files. Obviously, the multi user collaboration

⏹️ ▶️ John helps tremendously to I think it balances off the awkwardness like that people would

⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things people probably would rather do be dealing with files and folders. But because Google

⏹️ ▶️ John does so well with live multiple person editing and permissioning on documents that makes,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a group of people like a company who are working on files together, forgive a whole bunch of other things. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ John unfortunately, I don’t feel like Apple can bring that if history has shown, Apple cannot bring the

⏹️ ▶️ John seamless multi-user editing of all data types, uh, with a constant synchronization

⏹️ ▶️ John in the cloud as source of truth and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the style that Google does. So they have to, they have to bring

⏹️ ▶️ John something else. And this is probably a bad time for me to be pondering the future

⏹️ ▶️ John of An iCloud Drive style revolution for the entirety of iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John bringing it more in line with Enhancing its capabilities by taking that taking the shackles off

⏹️ ▶️ John and not confining to a very simple paradigm because I just got done today reading a sad

⏹️ ▶️ John tweet thread from our friend CGP gray about his battles with iCloud Drive and the amount of

⏹️ ▶️ John free spaces Mac thinks he has and also Marco with potentially exhausted file descriptors which may or may not be

⏹️ ▶️ John attributable to this all this is to say that at least on the mac

⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud drive is still in the doghouse as far as i’m concerned and i kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of don’t relish uh that paradigm expanding much more until

⏹️ ▶️ John reliability gets better but on ios i have to confess i haven’t had any of those problems

⏹️ ▶️ John on ios and in ios everything is much more locked down and maybe it will be fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John But the thing you described, Marco, with the force press and the dragging onto things,

⏹️ ▶️ John if, like you were talking about dragging data, right? But if there is any kind of file picker interface,

⏹️ ▶️ John some way to grab one of those documents or files or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John and bring it somewhere seems like a necessity. And obviously that interface you described works

⏹️ ▶️ John even better on a big screen because then you’ve got the second hand to swipe like that’s the whole problem with like once you’ve grabbed it quote-unquote

⏹️ ▶️ John grabbed it what if the thing you want to drag it to isn’t there because it does the grid of thing like

⏹️ ▶️ John then you have to do like it’s it’s the springboard rearranging problem like when you grab a thing to rearrange springboard

⏹️ ▶️ John and you want to rearrange it to a different screen you got to drag it at the edge and hold it there and it’s generally it’s an operation that people find awkward

⏹️ ▶️ John and unsatisfying whereas if you can grab it on your iPad but with your other hand

⏹️ ▶️ John swipe around to find the thing you want to drag it on top of that works on a phone it works less well so I almost think

⏹️ ▶️ John that that interface you described a will almost certainly be a part of a bunch of demos even if it’s not files

⏹️ ▶️ John data but just like there has to be some kind of grab a file and then zoom

⏹️ ▶️ John in or out to a different view and put it on something else it can’t just be side-by-side at least I feel that way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there can even be some kind of little like shelf thing to kind of temporarily hold it while you use your other while you use the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hand to pick the destination right

⏹️ ▶️ John but I always think that interface is actually better suited to a bigger screen it’s It’s not to say they won’t do it on a smaller one. In

⏹️ ▶️ John fact, they have no choice but to do it on a smaller one, because like you said, you can’t split it. And even a shelf on a smaller one, it’s like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John an iPhone 5 or iPhone SE, whatever the hell that thing is called, you’re going to have room for a shelf

⏹️ ▶️ John to put, I don’t know. But I’m kind of excited about, like

⏹️ ▶️ John I said, the coming out party of this file-based paradigm. And I think there’s also no guarantee that

⏹️ ▶️ John it will be the solution everyone seeks. Obviously, nerds will love it way better,

⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll see. Like, you know, again, with my experience with Google, with Google’s products,

⏹️ ▶️ John nothing about them made people better about dealing with files, but it brought

⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of features with it that everybody loves. And I guess the only thing, the only improvement of the file

⏹️ ▶️ John paradigm it brought with it is sharing that people seem to be able to figure out, which is not true

⏹️ ▶️ John of like sharing and a lot of other systems and the fact that you can move things around and people’s links

⏹️ ▶️ John to them don’t break, which is, is convenient. So I have kind of middle

⏹️ ▶️ John of the road hopes for iOS 11, but I expect it to be the true star of the keynote

⏹️ ▶️ John if there’s no SiriTube.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also expect some degree of redesign. We’ve seen little rumblings here and there about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. I think if you look at the conditions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were right before iOS 7, so like the iOS 6

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a time when the system stock UI widgets started

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking more dated than usual and they’re started like apps started

⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming out that people considered to be really good new design that was kind of fresh and different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also was kind of converging on some similar principles. So back then it was like letterpress

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like then Vesper like the you know these apps that were back in the iOS 6 era that were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing like you know flat shapes, no big textures, you know mostly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco color and accent color based design. Things that that ended up being very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco close to what iOS 7 was and then iOS 7 came out. It was kind of like the right time for it. Well I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now is the right time for a redesign. Not on the scale of iOS 7’s redesign

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but maybe on the scale of when when we went from iOS 5 to 6. Because remember, iOS 6

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was kind of a half step in a redesign. Like it kind of, it got rid of a lot of the iOS 5

⏹️ ▶️ Marco extravagance of things like textures, like certain things were flattened and toned down and sanded away and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like that. So I think we’re gonna have that level of redesign here because we can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see, even if you look around, even Apple’s own apps, if you look at iOS 10,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iOS 10 music app, and Maps especially, I think, has a different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look than everything else. And a couple of years ago, they released the WWDC 2017 app. I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John gonna say,

⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t that the thing we always do?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Are we all into the

⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC app and we say, this is what the new iOS is gonna look like. And sometimes there’s an element

⏹️ ▶️ John of truth that other times it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. Right, but there are, I think we can see common elements

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are now considered good, fresh, new design that are kind of being agreed upon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or converged upon that are very different from iOS 7. Some examples of this would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be things like kind of layered sheets with rounded corners

⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of navigation controllers in iOS 7 that push big, white,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sharp rectangles side to side. You know, now you have these like softer, rounded sheets that slide up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You pull things with swipes, and swipes are your primary navigation often for a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of apps. You move controls, you know, You scoot them kind of in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco away from the edges and corners so much because they’re harder to reach on big phones. This is a lot of stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did with Overcast. And the reason I did it was because I saw this stuff happening. I saw this trend happening. I wanted to get ahead

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. You have buttons that look a little bit more like buttons. Like in the WBC app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a great example. They’re like they’re rounded rectangles that are they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco textured. There’s a solid

⏹️ ▶️ John fill. Solid color instead of just an outline because then I went with with note with just the text And then

⏹️ ▶️ John there was outlines around the text. And now we’re slowly creeping back up onto the old style button where

⏹️ ▶️ John it is a solid rounded rectangle with text in the middle of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yeah, now you just have a flat shaded filled, solid filled rectangle, or round rect,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s with a bold color too. It isn’t like a subtle thing, it isn’t a gray,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a bold color. And it seems like apps are now kind of permitted to use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than one color at a time. Like the iOS 7 design was largely based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upon using mostly white, some thin gray lines, and then you’d

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have one tint color. And that would be like your one accent color for your app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you’d use that. So you basically had like single color design, a grayscale plus

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one color. Now I think we’re having multiple colors are now okay to have an apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. Um, and so, you know, again, if you look at like, look at Apple music, Look at the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 10 Maps app and this new WBDC 2017 app, and I think you see this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear convergence of a refreshed design language that is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the scale of iOS 7’s redesign, but the same or more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe as the iOS 6 redesign was.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re gonna keep the, I mean I guess they have to probably in some way, the buttonless buttons. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John even just for things that are in whatever you call the top bar where you hit done, or you go

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to the…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the navigate… Yeah, that was a big question I had when writing this up, is like, what do they do with navigation bar buttons?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because in the iOS 6 days, they would have outlines and textures. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that would look good here, but I think they can be done well. Part

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the answer, honestly, might just be that navigation bars are going out of style. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that most apps are now using these kind of like sheets and cards and things that are not as often using navigation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bars or not putting buttons there.

⏹️ ▶️ John because you can’t reach that anymore so right but they’re still going to be in the os i think they’re going to keep the they’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John keep them in the os especially for legacy applications they obviously have to keep supporting them and i think they will continue

⏹️ ▶️ John to be unadorned because at this point like the bar itself serves as a pretty good

⏹️ ▶️ John framing device to be to the tint color plus the bar this is one area where i

⏹️ ▶️ John think they were right makes it pretty clear that by this point if you have an iphone for any period of time that

⏹️ ▶️ John that done thing is a button and then you can hit it and you kind of have an idea of what it will do.

⏹️ ▶️ John One of the most awkward elements that was added recently, what was it, iOS 9, where they add the back arrow thing, they jam up

⏹️ ▶️ John into the upper left corner to get you back to the previous application. I would love for them to come up with a better solution for that. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have an idea for them, but it always strikes me as the most awkward

⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ive painting, inappropriately composed text jammed

⏹️ ▶️ John up into the corner. It’s like the beginning of a kernel panic, like it starts from just

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey overwriting your screen with this tiny little thing. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I appreciate the functionality. I use it all the time. It is good. Although sometimes it fakes me out because sometimes I want to hit

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that’s in the navigation bar underneath that thing. That’s not a fun operation to like carefully,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, here’s the thing I do, like, I go from my mail application and click a link and then I went to Safari,

⏹️ ▶️ John the navigation thing on the top says go back to mail, right? And then you’re scrolling through the web page that opened

⏹️ ▶️ John in Safari, and you navigate and you navigate and you realize, oh, I want to go back to the previous page in Safari. And

⏹️ ▶️ John yes, if you didn’t have a case on your iPhone, you’ll probably edge swipe, but I have difficulty with that because I do have a case. So what

⏹️ ▶️ John I want to do is hit the back button in Safari, which a is invisible right now because I’ve scrolled right

⏹️ ▶️ John and be when I find a way to make it visible is nestled snugly under the

⏹️ ▶️ John back to mail link. So very frequently I go to hit the back button instead I hit the

⏹️ ▶️ John two pixels away back to mail thing instead of going back and so far I go into an entirely different application

⏹️ ▶️ John and then I’m sad. So I would love for them to sort that out. Speaking of it, you go there’s something they could do

⏹️ ▶️ John for iOS on the phone for small screens sort out that mess

⏹️ ▶️ John up there somehow and if the solution is like like you said like you know navigation bars

⏹️ ▶️ John the advice is don’t do that because people can’t reach them anymore and here are different paradigms you know

⏹️ ▶️ John either just you know edge swipes or a lower navigation bar thing or those rounded rect

⏹️ ▶️ John sheets or whatever I’m I’m ready for that because I think that a I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS interface, you know, best practices shift

⏹️ ▶️ John that better reflects the size of phone screens these days is a little bit overdue.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. The double tap to move things down, like it was nice that they put that there,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you know, that’s another, like that little back thing, that’s another like, well, what can we do in the

⏹️ ▶️ John timeframe of this release to help people with large screens? You know, well, they could tap on the thing and make the screen fold it, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John all right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Perfect, ship it. That I think is the more embarrassing hack, compared to the status bar back button

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. The reachability feature is so embarrassing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Honestly, I think it probably has some utility, but I just never remembered that

⏹️ ▶️ John it exists. The only time I remember that it exists is when I accidentally activate it. And then I go, you know, I

⏹️ ▶️ John could probably benefit from using that intentionally every once in a while, but then I never, never do. I don’t think I’ve ever

⏹️ ▶️ John used it intentionally.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eventually, I just disabled it. There’s an option in settings to disable it because I would only ever accidentally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco invoke it and it drove me nuts so I just turned it off it’s been fine.

macOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, anything else about iOS?

⏹️ ▶️ John We just assume 11. We’re just going to keep going up with the numbers.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody had an interesting theory. I want to say it was either Mike or Jason that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything will go to 11 this year. So it’ll be Mac OS 11, iOS 11. Yeah, that was Jason.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I highly recommend if you haven’t heard by the end of this episode, this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like probably four hour long episode, if you haven’t heard enough WBDC predictions, I highly recommend this week’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode of Upgrade. a lot of good stuff in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, very much. So they do a whole draft. It’s very funny. And it’s where it’s very much worth

⏹️ ▶️ Casey listening to. I mean, the show is in general, but particularly the WWDC episodes are great. But anyway, yeah, going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 11. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John they took the numbers, they took the Roman numeral off macOS. And I don’t, I don’t see why they’d put the number

⏹️ ▶️ John back on at this point. You know what I mean? Like iOS 11. macOS has the

⏹️ ▶️ John place names and I like I like the yearly flavor.

⏹️ ▶️ John Honestly it would be cool if iOS had those too. I know they don’t do it or whatever. It’s kind of like a

⏹️ ▶️ John legacy thing for MacOS when it had the code names, then it had the cat names, and now it’s got the place names.

⏹️ ▶️ John Give MacOS some fun stuff. It had to endure this terrible capitalization squished up name

⏹️ ▶️ John so it matches all their other stupid OS names. At the very least, continue to give

⏹️ ▶️ John it the place names. Because there’s lots of fun things you can do with that. If they were to get rid of that and just go

⏹️ ▶️ John with Mac OS 11 and iOS 11, certainly fits with the human formity story. Like I said, they want everything to be

⏹️ ▶️ John all the same and look now we’re synchronized. But then what the hell would the 11 mean? Because it’s not the version number, I can tell you that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they just bumped the version number to be 11. I think I feel like they should have learned their lesson when

⏹️ ▶️ John they went to, you know, from 10.9 to 10.10. And everyone’s like version number, you know, everyone’s

⏹️ ▶️ John incorrect version number checks and their applications got all freaked out to change the first digit from 10 to 11

⏹️ ▶️ John in the version? I mean, I don’t know, they didn’t do it at once, I suppose they can do it, but it just seems like

⏹️ ▶️ John not a big marketing win because 11 is more boring than like Sacramento or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think changing the first digit makes total sense. And as Jason said on Upgrade,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re ever going to do it, it makes total sense to do it now so it then matches the iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version for future marketing purposes. And right now the first digit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been 10 so long it’s basically meaningless like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just ignore the first day it doesn’t matter at all which kind of raises the question of why why even bother keeping that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like it’s like what purpose is it serving just being ten point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John something

⏹️ ▶️ John forever it’s making people’s incorrect version number checks continue to function correctly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was a Windows thing that’s why they went from eight to ten that was that’s not a Mac thing I mean like no that was on the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John they had it when they went from ten nine to ten ten because a lot of things would interpret ten ten is ten one and being less

⏹️ ▶️ John than ten nine because yeah I I mean, it’s not a big deal. Like, you know, it’s not gonna stop them from doing it, certainly if they

⏹️ ▶️ John feel like it, especially for marketing reasons. But it’s, you know, I think the bigger reason to not

⏹️ ▶️ John do it is because place names are more fun than numbers. And like,

⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t we all been asking, like, macOS, stop trying to keep pace with iOS. Would it be more comfortable

⏹️ ▶️ John if you waited a little bit longer between releases and got things settled? Because that’s your role. Your role is the more slow-moving

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco one. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not doing that, they’re already not doing that. They’re already releasing them both once

⏹️ ▶️ John a year. I know, but if they make the numbers sink, then that’s like saying we’re signed up for an

⏹️ ▶️ John unlimited number more years where every year that they have to be in lockstep and I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, what else do you, besides naming things aside, I love that every year

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this discussion happens about like macOS naming, it’s always heavily discussed. Because it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more interesting and everyone has an opinion, myself included, like much more than we think we will.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Anyway, so let’s have an aside for- So let’s have an

⏹️ ▶️ John aside for a new default desktop backgrounds will be that’s the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey most exciting part of Mac OS is like

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s kind of and you know I speak as someone who wrote reviews for Mac operating system

⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time I enjoyed the like the the

⏹️ ▶️ John visual theming and branding and on the Mac the default desktop picture

⏹️ ▶️ John is the biggest boldest branding thing of the running OS

⏹️ ▶️ John on iOS, they do the best they do with branding is the lock screens

⏹️ ▶️ John they show in the PR stuff, and maybe the selections of the springboard backgrounds,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re always much more hidden than if you see a Mac desktop of it like a newly booted

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, even if it has a few windows open, like the the desktop background is so dominant, whereas

⏹️ ▶️ John the springboard background is much less dominant. So there’s not much in iOS to massively

⏹️ ▶️ John brand the OS outside of the widgets themselves and the UI and stuff like that. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I do enjoy like, you’re making a joke like, oh, who cares what the default desktop background is

⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac. That’s a big part of the excitement of a new version of the Mac operating system for me. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if I’m an anomaly, but like the big posters they put up with whatever the theme is, or the big waves for Mavericks

⏹️ ▶️ John and the cool pictures of Yosemite. And I like that stuff. And,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in the absence of them, particularly changing the Mac UI, which doesn’t seem like they’re interested in these

⏹️ ▶️ John days. All we get is a cool name and a cool desktop picture, and sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s enough to make an association of my mind that I will link those images and that

⏹️ ▶️ John branding and that sort of mood and theme with whatever features they add, whether they be, oh, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is the one that had Siri, or this is the one where they added Spotlight, or this is the one that had Time Machine, or this year, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is the one with the new file system that they won’t even mention in the keynote, so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that leads into my next point here on macOS, which is, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we all assume, based on how they did iOS’s rollout and their promises last year, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco APFS is most likely going to ship with whatever the next version of macOS is, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would even say most likely even the default, and I would go a little bit further and say, what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s the only option? What if you have to convert your boot drive? Other drives, you can probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do whatever you want, But what if you have to convert your boot drive to APFS upon installation?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that won’t be that big of a deal because a we know they can do it really, really well,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So that you know, it’s not like it’s going to trash people’s data. And of all the things be like a boot drive,

⏹️ ▶️ John the only time that messes with you is if you frequently use target disk mode, right? Because

⏹️ ▶️ John every other way that that disk is read, you don’t have to worry that it’s not a two

⏹️ ▶️ John s plus anymore, target disk mode, all of a sudden, your other the max can’t read it anymore if they’re not upgraded as well, right? But all

⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re sharing it, like it’s, you know, SMB or you know, whatever, like it’s not doesn’t matter what format it is. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s a reasonable thing to do. I’m just wondering, like, what would be the advantage, right? Oh, this operation doesn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to run hfs plus. Maybe if there’s some kind of headlining feature that

⏹️ ▶️ John demands APFS, like the newly rejiggered version of time machine that’s like way more efficient and stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John But they have an old version of time machine that works with hfs plus I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John Personally, I don’t think there’s going to be the fancy new version of time machine that works with APFS yet anyway. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John think this is not the year for forcing default unless there’s some other feature that I’m not thinking of, of forcing

⏹️ ▶️ John the the boot volume to be APFS. I think they could do it, but I’m looking for a reason why they would want to,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, they would want to do that. Maybe maybe simplicity, like again,

⏹️ ▶️ John with all the Mac things, I just feel like, do they care enough about the Mac to be that aggressive

⏹️ ▶️ John with the advancement of the platform or were they just, you know, this is one area where they will take a slower pace. Like this year, APFS rollout,

⏹️ ▶️ John a couple new features that are based on it. Next year, if we’re lucky, the new version of Time Machine that takes advantage

⏹️ ▶️ John of all the cool stuff, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I have a hard time gauging like how much of a big deal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac OS is going to be this year. There’s a whole bunch of things that, that the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could, you know, if they’re going to be putting more effort into the Mac than they have been recently. There are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas that could be really cool. Things like a new time machine based on APFS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco snapshots and everything. And that’s incredibly powerful. The things you can do by having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a snapshot-based time machine. And there’s two. You can do not only the external drive backup,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but even just giving snapshot support to the internal time machine,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the time machine on its own drive kind of thing, like a mini time machine.

⏹️ ▶️ John They can get rid of the terrible local time machine hack that we all have running on

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco our

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco laptops,

⏹️ ▶️ John whether we know it or not, which is, in my experience, extremely unreliable, and yet still they’re grinding

⏹️ ▶️ John away, trying to do something useful for you, and it’s just like, ugh, just please stop, and you can turn it off, yes, I know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, there’s all this cruft in Mac OS because of having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do these advanced features on HFS+, that if they just make APFS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only option that just your boot drive automatically gets converted when you install

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next Mac OS, which is exactly what they did with iOS, then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could stop supporting a whole lot of that legacy stuff. Like it would be much better for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their efforts to bring the APFS features forward if they knew the OS was only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running on APFS. So I think it’s plausible. But

⏹️ ▶️ John they still have to support all HFS Plus anyway because you can time machine backup external volumes and they’re gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ John HFS Plus and so on and so forth. So like it’s not like they can get rid all that legacy cruft code anytime soon.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I’m thinking of like, well, what if there’s a feature that they just like, they wouldn’t want to have a feature that says, Oh, let’s demo

⏹️ ▶️ John this awesome new feature, say it’s the new time machine, and also have to say, oh, and you can only use this feature if you

⏹️ ▶️ John convert your boot volume. That’s the case where they would say, you’re, you know, a, they probably wouldn’t even mention it, but B, it would

⏹️ ▶️ John convert your boot volume no matter what. But even in that case, they still have to support the old crap way of time machine,

⏹️ ▶️ John because people I have external drives that I backup through time machine, and their HFS plus

⏹️ ▶️ John and asking people to you know, not asking but forcibly upgrading their boot drive as part of the upgrade

⏹️ ▶️ John process like they did in iOS, you could swing that telling them Oh, and by the way, you also have to convert all your external

⏹️ ▶️ John drives. Not not gonna happen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe I’m still optimistic that they might require on the boot drive, though. But anyway, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a that’s a question for me for prediction wise. Do you think the word the letters APFS in that order all

⏹️ ▶️ John capitals will appear on any slide or be spoken by any presenter. I guess it’ll be spoken in passing maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. Will it appear on a slide?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, absolutely. Worst case scenario, it’ll appear on the word cloud slide.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it is. I mean, obviously, in State of the Union and stuff would be I’m trying to think of the keynote. Does it doesn’t make it because it didn’t make the keynote last

⏹️ ▶️ John year. And that’s when it was introduced. Remember, we found out about it when we left the building. And it was like, Oh, by the way, APFS. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I remember that moment very specifically. Yes.

⏹️ ▶️ John I remember it too. But like, the fact that it didn’t make the keynote didn’t did not good

⏹️ ▶️ John enough for the keynote sorry replacing a you know 15 year old 19

⏹️ ▶️ John year old depending on how you trace it back to HFS the file system not not important

⏹️ ▶️ John it made the State of the Union and it totally will this time too and there’ll be sessions about it and I’ll be all happy and everything

⏹️ ▶️ John but I really that’s speaking of hopes and dreams give me this one how talk about APFS

⏹️ ▶️ John at least in passing during the Mac section of the VRC keynote you hear that

⏹️ ▶️ John Craig, make it happen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s a long shot. There was a thing that I think ATV Tipster told us forever ago

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was being considered. And I haven’t heard a thing about it since, so it probably isn’t happening.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Long shot though, do you think they would offer iCloud Time Machine as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an online backup? So one reason I think they might, besides

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact that they now would have the technical infrastructure with APFS to reasonably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. I think one of the themes that I expect to see here

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Apple pushing people even harder into subscribing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud data plans, into buying more iCloud storage space, giving more and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more compelling reasons for people to start paying Apple $3, $5, $10, or $20 a month for this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud storage space, because there’s going to be more and more features that can use it. Cloud Time Machine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would use a ton of it. So what if they did that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, they’re totally going to do that. It’s just a question of whether it’s this year or not. And speaking of Apple services,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think, I mean, we still always complain about their pricing and how they’re sometimes competitive, sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John not, depending on the year, depending on the thing you’re looking at, depending on how you’re measuring it. But I’ve always felt like the Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John way to do things, and we mentioned this many times in the context of iOS. And now I think of it again in the context of

⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud Time Machine is not to buy an amount of space because that’s a techie nerd thing

⏹️ ▶️ John and people don’t like to think about that especially because it’s like more price you know higher price for more but to

⏹️ ▶️ John sell to sell a backup my Mac plan right like

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean you know like back plays or any of the other things do like you don’t buy based on space you buy based on

⏹️ ▶️ John I want to back up this Mac like you buy like a membership in a club and then you break

⏹️ ▶️ John the association between like Apple loves to do break the association between the dollar amount

⏹️ ▶️ John and a spec right the dollar amount and storage space. And now it’s the dollar amount

⏹️ ▶️ John and a result. And the result is your Mac is part of the iCloud backup club. And just like your phone

⏹️ ▶️ John is backed up to the cloud, your Mac is backed up. Obviously the phone has the same problem that you buy storage space and people run out of

⏹️ ▶️ John it and they freak out. And we’ve talked about this a million times. If Apple’s gonna charge more than everybody else, the way to hide that

⏹️ ▶️ John extra cost is to, I mean, essentially like go unlimited, but not really. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John to make it that you’re buying the result. And obviously how much storage space you would use use would be

⏹️ ▶️ John based on the size of your boot drive or your device or they’re like, obviously there would be a limit

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know what I mean? But like to frame it in that way or maybe it doesn’t have to be a way. Honestly, if Backblaze can

⏹️ ▶️ John do it, why the hell can’t Apple, right? Can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very different than won’t. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, iCloud Time Machine has to come.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if local time machine is even coming this year, let alone Cloud Time Machine.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that is entirely a matter of how because they could have done that years ago. They could have done it badly, but they did

⏹️ ▶️ John it on the phones with HMS Plus, and obviously on the phones it’s easier because you know exactly what you need to back up, and you can discard lots of stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John because you can get it from the store, and yada, yada, yada. But Apple loves services, and you’re right, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John a way to charge more for services, and they have the technical underpinnings to do a much better job of this.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s only a matter of time, and a matter of how much attention is the Mac getting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I really do think that what Apple wants, and what, you know, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pushing from more and more services revenue, obviously. It’s an area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of growth that they can use that is probably easier to achieve than some of the other areas of growth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to maintain, because of the different scales and everything. So they’re gonna be pushing this heavily, as they have been in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last couple of years. I expect in general, I expect there to be things like very, very heavy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pushes towards subscribing to Apple Music. That’s gonna be a big one. And I think iCloud Drive, or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just iCloud Storage, is going to be one of those things too. Basically, my theory is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that within probably the next few years, Apple wants to try to make it so that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using an iPhone or a Mac or any Apple device without having a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco decent amount of iCloud storage space that you’re paying for every month should feel like using it without

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple ID. Like there should be all this stuff that you’re missing out on by not paying Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five or 10 bucks a month for this additional storage. That’s where I think they wanna push this, and I think they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will. And it’s not like purely cynical. There’s lots of great things they can offer once you do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I do think there’s certainly a big motivation there to increase that services revenue. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gonna be one of the ways they do it that happens to correspond to things that are also nice for users.

⏹️ ▶️ John My stretch hope and dream for Mac OS before we leave this topic is, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John laugh thinking about this, but an announcement of vastly improved

⏹️ ▶️ John 3D API support, whether that be OpenGL Vulkan or whatever, like an inexplicable announcement because they

⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t have any hardware associated with it. It’d be like, why? All right, that’s great, but like no one

⏹️ ▶️ John games on a Mac and all your GPUs are really weak. Why are you touting your improved OpenGL

⏹️ ▶️ John support? Like that you’re caught up with the spec and that you’re like, and we would know the answer is like, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John another shoe that’s gonna drop but that’s called the Mac Pro that they’re gonna make someday and maybe it’ll have awesome GPUs, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, not DirectX for Mac OS. Blahmer in the chat. I would be

⏹️ ▶️ John excited by that Because it’s an area where they are super behind and they’ve been paying attention to metal

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know like I don’t I don’t know that’s I don’t predict it,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I would I would be super excited by that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a couple of stretch goals. I mean first of all we should before we leave the the more plausible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco section we should also cover that I think the rumored

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro drawing tablet mode is realistic and plausible for this year’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco release.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re loving that in with Mac OS instead of the iPad I suppose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah it’s really a Mac OS feature the the idea behind this feature as rumored is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the is that an iPad Pro with a pencil could be attached in some I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s only gonna be working over a wire or whether they can do it wirelessly but can do it wirelessly hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but basically that can enter a mode where a Mac app can use the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and its pencil as a stylus surface of some kind and we don’t really know anything more than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that or whether this is even in for this year or not but I think the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would probably do this if they’re going to do this would not just be that it would be like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a second screen that you could just move windows onto no I think it would be more like the way they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did the touch bar which is it would be a separate type of output

⏹️ ▶️ Marco display slash input display that apps would have to specifically write support for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that they would specifically say like what would be shown on it and specifically receive the events

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the pencil from it so it would if they do it that way I think it’s a much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer feature I think it’s it’s better and it would have slower adoption if you have to wait for all the apps that that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could benefit from this to integrate this this potential new API you know just just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the text bar but I think that that if that works out that could be a way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better way to do it and that’s probably the way that they would do such a feature.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like everyone is talking about it as the single phrase for this feature is, oh, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can use your iPad as a Cintiq. But a Cintiq behaves as essentially a monitor that you can draw in. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John it appears as a second monitor. You can arrange it with the other monitor. The full UI of your Mac can be there. You can drag the little

⏹️ ▶️ John menu bar down to it so that it is actually your primary display. But that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not how you just described this feature working on the iPad. That it wouldn’t just be because there are apps now you

⏹️ ▶️ John can get your iPad to do this like oh your iPad is a second screen from your Mac and now you can draw on your drawing app

⏹️ ▶️ John with with the stylus because of course it’s the second screen you have input this seems like a more tart

⏹️ ▶️ John the rumors are a lot of a more targeted interface like you said like the touch bar that is specifically addressable by

⏹️ ▶️ John the applications it is not just like hey every application gets this free because it’s just a second small screen which

⏹️ ▶️ John they could also do as a mode or whatever but to really to leverage their

⏹️ ▶️ John the capabilities of the you know the high refresh rate and the stylus input and all that

⏹️ ▶️ John other stuff it seems to me that it has is it a better solution to have apps

⏹️ ▶️ John support it specifically in the same way that supports touch bar to be able to draw a UI over there and to be

⏹️ ▶️ John able to have the iPad handle a lot of the drawing you

⏹️ ▶️ John know the local drawing to make it as responsive as we know the pencil can be in the good applications

⏹️ ▶️ John at having that collaborate with the Mac app. And it could be good, and it will make people’s iPads

⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful and capable, but not that I’m gonna say this reminds me of the old

⏹️ ▶️ John world, but I think of that arrangement, and it seems cool and useful and a great way

⏹️ ▶️ John to leverage Apple’s existing hardware with a clever software solution, but then I think of the Microsoft Surface Studio sitting

⏹️ ▶️ John over there, kind of glaring at me, going, tapping its fingers, going, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John hello, guys, I don’t know what you’re doing over there with your multiple devices and your Steampunk windows,

⏹️ ▶️ John but here I am, a giant screen, touch me, draw on me and put me up, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand why this is something that people want. Like, I mean, for like artists

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and stuff, I guess, but why would a regular schmo want their iPad Pro as like a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wacom tablet for their computer?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s for artists. I mean, in this way we’re describing it, yeah, it’s totally

⏹️ ▶️ John for artists, because Cintiqs are super expensive and I have one, they’re not that

⏹️ ▶️ John great, like they’re okay. If you already have an iPad with

⏹️ ▶️ John a stylus and you like drawing on it, but you also like Adobe Illustrator, the full version of which does not,

⏹️ ▶️ John or Photoshop or whatever, doesn’t ship for iOS, just these cut down versions, this is an interesting solution

⏹️ ▶️ John to the pro app problem. To get more people to buy iPads to use with their Macs that they might buy anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John but this pushes them over the edge. because if it doesn’t work as a second monitor, like a Cintiq,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t see people buying it as a way to use your Mac through a stylus. And again, there are iOS apps

⏹️ ▶️ John you can buy today to remotely use your Mac to use your iPad as a second screen to

⏹️ ▶️ John use your iPad as a, you know, as a Cintiq like device for your Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John presumably when Apple invents that they will do it a better job because they have, you know, low level access to

⏹️ ▶️ John all that good stuff. And so that’s what people are waiting for. And it is narrow, but like in terms of,

⏹️ ▶️ John know, the potential slash promised focus on pros,

⏹️ ▶️ John both with iOS 11 and making iOS more capable on the big iPads and the Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John This seems like a move that is aimed towards creative pros and app developers who think they can make

⏹️ ▶️ John a cool application with this capability and think they can sell it for a fair price on the App Store.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just seems to me like it would be a lot of investment for not a lot of return. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe I’m missing the boat. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not that much investment, though. I feel like they’re almost there with the implement. Third parties can do it.

⏹️ ▶️ John The plumbing must be there. Apple’s just going to do the better, lower latency job of it and

⏹️ ▶️ John have an opinion about how it should be done in terms of APIs and stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it could be really cool, too. I mean, if you think about, obviously, there’s lots of artistic uses for this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I wouldn’t use

⏹️ ▶️ John any

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of those. Oh, you want to

⏹️ ▶️ John use it to edit audio. I see it coming.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously, I would consider it. I would try that. But I think there’s a lot of areas of common tasks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people do that could benefit from being able to quickly alternate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between pen input, especially really good pen input like this, like the iPad Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good pen input, and also a keyboard and mouse. And to be able to kind of alternate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between having that incredibly awesome pen thing that only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been available directly in iOS so far, but also integrated with Mac workflows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That could apply to lots of things. That could be as simple as like, if I’m working in Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Notes, which I really like Notes. I’ve been using it more and more, and I did have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one problem a couple months ago where like one device just wouldn’t sync, and it just was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck for a long time, and I tried a bunch of crap, and eventually it started syncing again. And I’ve heard a few other people who’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had similar problems, so that’s a little concerning.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I hope I will work her up a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco note that you must hunt down an expunge right exactly yes who knows but but like one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the things notes as you can integrate doodles and drawings with the pencil and everything and so like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now if I want a note to contain a drawing I have to go over to my iPad and add

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there and that but it’s like if I’m working on my Mac that’s kind of not convenient but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I was working you know in if I had this that and my iPad was on my desk

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could just like reach over doodle something and then just put my hands right back on the Mac keyboard and go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right back to work on the Mac, not have to wait for a sync to happen, but up and down to the cloud and everything else like I’d be I’d be working

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the document right here. You know, stuff like that. I think there’s a lot of potential workflows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, whether it’s basic things like doodling or annotation, marking up documents, there’s so many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different things that aren’t just like freehand drawing in Photoshop, where this could be really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco helpful, not to mention the freehand drawing in Photoshop or even things like like if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re drawing something in Illustrator and you know in a vector program where you’re doing less freehand stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more kind of like drawing with with math and parameters but you do want to add a freehand element

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to something it’s easy to just add that and then go back to your keyboard and mouse for all the precise stuff you know so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think there’s and this all might not happen because this all depends on lots

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of good high-quality third-party integration happening and that’s always a crap shoot You never know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what developers will take advantage of and how soon and how well. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot of potential for this kind of feature. So if it isn’t a massive deal for Apple to add this, if it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like a huge three year undertaking where they can do nothing else, this would be nice to have, yes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s something that, you know, I think features that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can really change the way people work on the Mac are hard to come by these days. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think when they come by them, there’s actually a decent chance, as long as there’s not massive downsides,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they actually might consider doing them. So this I consider plausible, and if they actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it, I think it could be really cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John They haven’t had a good Adobe Mac app demo at a keynote in a really long time. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the old world. Wouldn’t it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey be

⏹️ ▶️ John nice to come back to the old days and have a Photoshop demo on a Mac, granted with

⏹️ ▶️ John an iOS device, fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John You win some, you lose some. I should run some filters and time them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I do have two stretch goals. You had one for the Mac, I have two. Because it goes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to my earlier question of like, I don’t know how much effort they put into the Mac this year.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if they put in a good amount, these are actually kind of plausible. But that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, with the Mac you never really know whether it’s gonna be a, not even a big year, a medium-sized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or a small year, let’s be honest. And so I think my number one stretch goal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the beginning of the iTunes replacement. Now I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey not sure it would be completely. I know I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not sure it would be complete in one pass. It would probably not be, but I’m thinking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would probably start seeing apps with new names

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like that you know, maybe the idea that the iTunes yeah that the iTunes app would still exist,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it would be like in utilities or you know buried somewhere and then so like if you plugged in an ipod

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay you here’s your ancient app for your ancient device that it would be the ipod

⏹️ ▶️ John a second app called iphone yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the worst yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think it’s plausible this year not I wouldn’t say likely,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but plausible that we have an apple music app on the mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what that is is up in the air that could be it could literally be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as the first version. It could be a fork and rename of iTunes with just the music stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enabled and everything else

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stripped out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ John then mask everything else. All the code is still there. The preference dialog is still modal, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the app is now called Music.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s an if-def at the top. So it could be as simple as that. Or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be a total from scratch app that only does Apple Music.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it would only have the Apple Music streaming service. It would not have local library playback

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even the iTunes Store. Because that’s not Apple Music. That’s different. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it would be a

⏹️ ▶️ John port of the iOS Apple Music app. Don’t forget that. It would use UXKit for everything, right? It’s like photos

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over again. Honestly, I had that on my list. Because if you think about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, one of the reasons why it would be hard to do this all in one year is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they don’t want it to just be Apple Music, if they want it to be Apple Music plus

⏹️ ▶️ Marco local library support plus store support, they would probably do one of those weird iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco port kind of apps to the Mac, where it would be kind of weirdly iOS-y. Maybe it would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use UXKit, or maybe it would use its own version of that, because that might just be for the Photos team. Who knows? It would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be weirdly limited. It wouldn’t feel very Mac-like, but it could be an Apple Music

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. And I think that goes along with, obviously, they’d have a video app, or TV for the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’d have the TV app, obviously. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that? Anyway. And then also,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iTunes podcasts were recently renamed to Apple podcasts. So maybe there would be an Apple podcast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app on the Mac. So this stuff all makes sense. It’s very aggressive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have all this planned for this year, which is why this was my stretch goal. Again, I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say it’s likely, but I do think it’s plausible and I do think that it is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something they will get to. I just don’t know when.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think about the sort of concentrated political capital

⏹️ ▶️ John that must be in the iTunes team. Yeah, because like, there’s got to be a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of important people associated with their product at the high and low levels. At various times in Apple’s history,

⏹️ ▶️ John it was arguably the most important product that Apple was currently making and had ever made

⏹️ ▶️ John like in the heyday of the iPod and everything like iTunes was where it was all happening. And then it, it managed to

⏹️ ▶️ John hitch a ride on the iPhone rocket a little bit. But like the fact that it has remained so long

⏹️ ▶️ John and that every year it gets these it gets so much more attention than

⏹️ ▶️ John than the improvements that are actually made by this attention seem to warrant like year after year oh we’ve moved stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John around and we’ve changed the UI but fundamentally have not fixed this application it’s like there must be people working

⏹️ ▶️ John on it and every year they have new things that they do and you know every

⏹️ ▶️ John like not small things they have big new ideas about how the UI can be different and apparently this year they think the mini

⏹️ ▶️ John player should be not so many anymore and it’s just always something but the preference dialogue is still modal and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still old iTunes you just like what what is there must be such a concentration

⏹️ ▶️ John of power there that they that that like power and like the power to make these

⏹️ ▶️ John people continue to add features combined with the neglect to say we don’t care enough to make you do all

⏹️ ▶️ John those things that Marco just said that that are inevitable but like we always wait for the first one to come

⏹️ ▶️ John so the only one of those things I will believe is that an Apple Music app is the closest to not being

⏹️ ▶️ John a stretch goal. But all those other things, like, I don’t even know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know, it’s, it’s, I don’t really understand how we could have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody with a media app or a group of people with a media app pay so little attention to the Mac after

⏹️ ▶️ Casey years. Imagine, imagine being in a position where you, you have a media app and you just completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ignore the Mac. I mean, Marco, how could one ever get in that position? What would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey their headspace have to be to just completely neglect the Mac for a media-based

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John application?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple has people who know AppKit, though. That is key. Like, they’re not going, oh, AppKit, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John scared. It’s not like UIKit.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could have stopped that sentence at, Apple has people. Apple has a staff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of more than one developer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, haven’t you

⏹️ ▶️ John heard you can charge way more for your Mac app?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah. Yeah, why don’t you ask the other Mac podcast players how well they’re doing?

⏹️ ▶️ John boom in my case, he will just have that case, he will just have to pull a Twitter for the Mac and just, you know, spend an obscene amount of money for

⏹️ ▶️ John his copy. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, truth be told, I actually don’t really need it as much anymore, because I’ve just been using my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods to connect to whatever device I need to connect to. So when I listen to podcasts, I connect to my phone. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in principle, we have to all agree that there is some amount of humor to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco lamenting iTunes as overcast for the Mac is simply a a URL

⏹️ ▶️ John not much because again Marco is not the world’s largest corporation so let’s keep

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that in mind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair fair

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now if you want to talk about stretch goals I have the mother of all stretch goals this this is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac Pro no this I think I think the Mac Pro being released is more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely than this but

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have it on here this is gonna be good

⏹️ ▶️ John realm of fantasy now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my number two stretch goal my final stretch goal for Mac OS is significant improvements

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Mac App Store and sandboxing. Yeah. Okay, sure.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John here’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John here’s, okay, so,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, so just brief background. So both the Mac App Store

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sandboxing launched in 2011. It was, I had to look it up. It was so long ago. 2011.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They had a ton of shortcomings. It was really like, both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Store and Sandboxing were really very, very rough 1.0s.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they have been completely untouched since. They have been a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rough 1.0 for six years. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually did hear rumblings a little while back that there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was an effort to actually rewrite the Mac App Store app and to really improve it. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve seen, ever since Phil took over the App Store, there really has been substantial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco progress. And there was some before that, but now there’s a lot of progress in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the App Stores. And I still think this is a very long shot for this year. I do think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is probably finally on the road map. I think somebody is finally working on this. The only question is when it comes out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Are

⏹️ ▶️ John they racing the iTunes replacement team? Those two teams? I mean, honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac App Store has a long way to go before it before it earns the stripes that iTunes have in terms of being the crusty

⏹️ ▶️ John old application that you can’t get rid of on the system because it’s essential. But that is, I mean, I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John iTunes does improve like I left before but does it I think I think I mean, the Mac of startup

⏹️ ▶️ John has been improved in ways that are not visible to users like I believe that they have addressed reliability

⏹️ ▶️ John under the covers to make it not as awful as it was they haven’t. I mean, it is it is still

⏹️ ▶️ John buggy. I totally grant you that but I have to think that there has even if it’s just messing with

⏹️ ▶️ John the demons that are underlying the thing was the Mac App Store is a strange application like so many of these cloud

⏹️ ▶️ John powered things where it’s it’s really just a thin, partially web based UI

⏹️ ▶️ John on top of a bunch of persistent processes that are running whether the App Store is launched or not, which is why you can click the

⏹️ ▶️ John update thing to update your things or install an application then quit the Mac App Store app and your installation proceeds

⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not your app, it’s doing it’s just communicating to background demons and I feel like that also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why you click that update button and just nothing happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, well, that’s just a reflection of the thing happens

⏹️ ▶️ John right if but I think the reliability of actually communicating to the background demons and telling them to do their thing

⏹️ ▶️ John has improved over time, but I think it is plausible for them to do

⏹️ ▶️ John a do an iTunes style refresh where you aren’t fundamentally changing the nature of the application in any way,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you moved a bunch of crap around and recolored some things right or maybe you add tab support and just say

⏹️ ▶️ John look significant improvements the Mac App Store, which I think does not fall into the category of significant as far as I’m concerned, because

⏹️ ▶️ John like I said, it’s an iTunes style update where it visually looks different and people think it’s the new Mac App Store, but fundamentally

⏹️ ▶️ John it is still the same daemons and the same weird web-based UI communicating with it and they just added tab bar

⏹️ ▶️ John support or some crap like that. I could see them doing that, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John am 100% willing to believe that the project is underway somewhere to massively

⏹️ ▶️ John improve the Mac App Store by making a new application with the same name that

⏹️ ▶️ John works way better.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure it’s in progress, but I will be flabbergasted if we see it this year.

⏹️ ▶️ John I still think my open jail thing is even more far fetched, though. Yeah, of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco course.

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Mac hardware

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s weird because both for iOS and macOS, there’s nothing I can think of right now that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m like, oh man, I can’t imagine them not delivering blank. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like, and I think Marco had talked about this a lot last year, that a lot of the low-hanging fruit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been plucked. And so at this point, like, what do we really want?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And when it comes down for both, for me is more about hardware than software and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC in the last few years has not really been a hardware event. But that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey being said, what do we want from Macs this year? And I can tell you, I want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a MacBook Adorable update. That’s all I want in the world. Please,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can I have a MacBook Adorable update?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think the hardware rumors are unusually strong this year. And usually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in previous years, you are right that WBC is almost always a no hardware event. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually in previous years when the hardware rumors would start up, Apple would shut them down with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a carefully placed controlled leak so that there would be some kind of reliable report from the Wall Street Journal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that saying there’s definitely not going to be new hardware announced as they saw for focused event.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that hasn’t happened this year. There’s a lot of hardware noise and there’s been no denial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that or no expectation setting statement like that anywhere. So I’m guessing that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know there is some fire under the smoke. The only question is which of the hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumors are actually scheduled to to to come out this this time like now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of the fall or some other time. And yeah and you know Apple schedule

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wise I don’t expect there to be an event in mid-july or anything like it’s you know the hardware is gonna either

⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out or it’s either gonna be announced when it ships is a different story but it’s either gonna be announced Monday

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in September or October you know I wouldn’t expect anything anything in the meantime there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I would say the the rumors this time are a little all over the place

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the rumors basically that everything is getting updated but the the ones that seem most plausible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and most concentrated are the the pretty much every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern MacBook and MacBook Pro so the 12-inch and then the the modern

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros are all rumored to get Kaby Lake

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intel CPU updates. That would be nice. As far as I know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of these parts are available from Intel. I don’t think we’re waiting on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any chips being available or anything like that. I think it is therefore plausible for all these things to get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these updates. There are some people who are saying no it’s way too soon but the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact is these all came out in October, they were already late even then, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, going like nine months between updates is not unheard of.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They used to do things like that all the time when new CPUs came out faster and Apple would get on top of them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco faster. So that is a thing that happens sometimes, not often, but sometimes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it is totally plausible for them to update these things so quote soon. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they do, you know, everyone has this like wish list of things they want to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be changed with the new Mac. We talked about this recently, so I won’t go too far into it. Basically, I would expect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no major external changes. I wouldn’t expect different ports or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more ports or the return of an SD card reader or anything that people want that was removed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not expect any external changes whatsoever. If they have revised the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fix the issues that I’ve been complaining about with reliability, especially with heat, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they fix that, they won’t say so. It’ll be a silent update. The one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco area that I think they might hit, the main areas of complaints, well

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two. One I think it is possible they will offer a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 32GB RAM option on the 15-inch. Even though I think it still would need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use the higher battery draw RAM, but I don’t think the battery

⏹️ ▶️ Marco draw, I haven’t looked into the fine details of this, I don’t think I’m really qualified, but the difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the super low power RAM and the kind of low power RAM would probably only make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe like a 5% difference to battery life off the top of my head. That’s probably the ballpark we’re talking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about here. It makes total sense why Apple would not want that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be on all of the MacBook Pros of a a certain size, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would not surprise me at all if they have that as an option. So like if you want to trade 5% of your battery

⏹️ ▶️ Marco life for 32 gigs of RAM, fine. You know, that’s within the realm of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple component options they’ve offered before. That’s within the realm of different CPU options

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or things like whether you get the discrete GPU or integrated only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on certain models that used to offer

⏹️ ▶️ John that. It would be great if they combined the 32 gig RAM option with the option for for a notice free GPU

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they will but that would be a way to offset it maybe in future models

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and that’s one thing too I also do think I think are the GPUs in Kaby Lake

⏹️ ▶️ Marco powerful enough to do an integrated only 15-inch now I know because with Skylake there was a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing where basically like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It tells integrated GPUs for that generation sucked and so they were Apple didn’t probably wouldn’t think they were good enough I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Kaby Lake they’ve improved them And so it would so one of the biggest complaints about the new MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pros is that they’ve been more expensive than the old ones So I think Apple will try to address this in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some small way with not necessarily price drops but lower spec

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to entry prices for things so The 15-inch would probably be the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first one to get such a thing Maybe even the only one to get a meaningful lower price

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But maybe they could do a discreet. Sorry an integrated GPU only 15 inch like they used to do before before,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I’ve always been a big fan of because the battery life is usually substantially better and more consistent and more controllable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So integrated only 15 inch, I do not expect a touch bar less

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 15 inch escape. I don’t expect that at all. Maybe later, like in a couple of years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not soon. But I do think having a cheaper entry

⏹️ ▶️ Marco level configuration is likely, probably iGPU only. And then also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 32 gig option on the high end and with no other changes to the lineup. I suspect that will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco address a lot of people’s concerns. It’ll really turn around the discussion on these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on whether they’re pro or not. If anyone’s still having that discussion, like I think Apple wanted to hit that and I think they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will in these two ways.

⏹️ ▶️ John If it might have good PR, but looking at those actual changes,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they actually don’t address that many of the problems because it’s like it’s perception

⏹️ ▶️ John like oh we’ll lower the entry price but if you get the the 15 inch macbook pro you want it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John still really expensive and we’ll add 32 gigs of ram but it’s not like we’re making the thing thicker

⏹️ ▶️ John adding more battery so you’re sacrificing for it and you still have to get a discrete gpu like it is it is superficially

⏹️ ▶️ John making changes in the direction that people want but it doesn’t fundamentally change the trade-offs

⏹️ ▶️ John that these machines make it just kind of it’s like better press except for the 32 which which is a capability

⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t have before. And so, you know, kudos for that. Like that’s going to be mostly a win, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I would still, you know, I would still be awaiting an actual revision

⏹️ ▶️ John that re-imagines these machines with the new

⏹️ ▶️ John demands of the market in mind. Like what the cranky part of the market has been saying

⏹️ ▶️ John about these, like make a new set of machines to take that into account. And for the MacBook, adorable, I know Casey just

⏹️ ▶️ John wants them to revise it and like whatever, they revise it and he’ll get it. I’m gonna put a 25% chance. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not even gonna be a stretch to everyone. I’m gonna say like, I think it is plausible that there could be another USB port on

⏹️ ▶️ John that sucker. Not 50%, 25% chance. Because they know it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that people want. They’re gonna do it eventually, I think. This is probably

⏹️ ▶️ John not the year to do it. It’s just like, oh, let’s just do an internal swap, KB Lake, blah, blah, blah. But,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, just, I don’t know. That’s my Mac stretch goal,

⏹️ ▶️ John aside from the Mac Pro stuff, which we’ll get to in a second. That’s my Mac stretch goal. That MacBook Adorable,

⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s revised, throw it, I have a vision in my head of Phil Schiller’s understated way that

⏹️ ▶️ John he would have mentioned that. I wish I could do a Phil Schiller impression, it would be like, and we’ve got another USB port

⏹️ ▶️ John around the side there, isn’t that nice? Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know

⏹️ ▶️ John how he would say that? You know how he would like undersell it, right? He would just like go through the slides

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco quickly,

⏹️ ▶️ John not dwell on it too long?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John ready for that to happen. But Casey will be happy no matter what. He just wants an internals

⏹️ ▶️ John revision.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All I want is to give Apple my money.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s all I want. Is that so much to ask? It’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John be so exciting when you’re like, yes, they came out and we can order them and you get them and your key starts sticking. Oh boy,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the shows will get out of that. Oh my God.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, because I won’t be able to bring it up. I won’t be able to bring it up because if I do,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John then- Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John we can tell when you type in chat and there’s no E’s in your text anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, there’s that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, if I bring it up, then I have to admit hashtag Marco was right and if we know anything about me we know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t like to do that

⏹️ ▶️ John he doesn’t have a hashtag he’s just got a broken keyboard yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s the hash symbol doesn’t work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it would only say mark was right because my okey would be stuck down oh

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my god that’s hysterical they’re good keys Marcus yeah all right so what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the Mac Pro can we just get it over with I don’t have a drink candy so let’s make it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John quick

⏹️ ▶️ John I might take out the Mac Pro as I still keep people hearing like oh they’re gonna tease the Mac Pro I was like, what, what

⏹️ ▶️ John can they even do? I, I don’t, I don’t need anything from them. I’m patient. I’m content to wait.

⏹️ ▶️ John We already had our Mac pro moment. We had our shows about it. There was a round table. Things were discussed. Apologies were made.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I think everything is fine there. If they want to tease something, guess it’s like, I’m not,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not, you know, I’m not a monster. I’m not, I don’t object to being teased. I just have a hard time believing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John just have a hard time believing that there is anything worth teasing at this point.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, Like the best thing about it is they have a logo. I honestly at this point, I hope they don’t have a case

⏹️ ▶️ John design that they can tease. I hope they haven’t finalized that yet because I want them to do

⏹️ ▶️ John a really good job. Like I said, I don’t want them to rush to market with a box with a bunch of stuff in it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I want it to be cool in all the ways that a cool Mac can be cool and I’m willing to wait a couple extra months for that, right? I have a hard

⏹️ ▶️ John time believing they have a case they could show. I have a hard time believing they would show the case. Marco pointed out when we were talking about this, I

⏹️ ▶️ John think in Slack before, he pointed out like, well, they tease the 2013 Mac Pro. I feel like that was practically a finished machine.

⏹️ ▶️ John I granted it didn’t ship for months, but they knew the design, they knew everything was going into it. Like this was,

⏹️ ▶️ John there was nothing that wasn’t like a, we’re gonna show you the case design of our work in progress. Like that was

⏹️ ▶️ John the machine that shipped. Like those, everything about it, right? And they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not at that point with the new Mac Pro, I imagine. So if they wanna show a logo and a tone poem kind of video,

⏹️ ▶️ John like the little dots connecting iOS 7 thing that they showed 700 times, sure. But I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John expect anything and I won’t be mad if I get nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m with you on all that. Basically, I really think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very soon to be showing anything meaningful. It would be nice if they did, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would put the likelihood fairly low on that. But I do think it’s worth asking about the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John In that Mac Pro version… Oh yeah, that’s what I had

⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac section in the notes. I had laptops and then I said desktops. Ha! Remember Mike’s desktops?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the iMac is overdue for an update, and they confirmed the existence of pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco configurations of the iMac during that Mac Pro press briefing. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those, I believe, I believe those were for this year. So the Mac Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they said, not this year. But the iMac, I think they specifically said this year. Like, coming in the fall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still. Right. And so it’s either now or the fall event, basically, is when these are likely to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be happening. I am still incredibly curious

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to learn what is a pro configuration of an iMac and how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does that differ from the Mac Pro? And how does this product not make either

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the other configuration of the iMac or the Mac Pro very redundant? Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is this middle ground? There are things they could do there, but they’re all kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird and obscure like high-end Intel CPUs and maybe like one or two Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro features, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John Slightly better GPUs.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s why it sounds,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why I’m incredibly curious about what the iMac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro is and what makes it different from the iMac and the Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the joke I made in Slack the other day was pinstripe, but now that I think about it, Casey’s

⏹️ ▶️ John matte black iPhone, put that finish on the iMac,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco make no other changes, call it the iMac Pro, people will buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. There you go, I’d probably buy one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible that the iMacs could come out this event,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think it feels, it’s weird, it feels late for the regular iMac, but it feels

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little early for the iMac Pro, depending on what they’re putting in it. So I would say that’s more likely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be pushed to the fall event. And there’s also, there was this rumor that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Air would be updated with no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John changes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other than it would get modern guts. And I think it’s unspecified whether that means sky like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the same

⏹️ ▶️ John old same old TN screen but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco modern guts right and that actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds incredibly plausible to me because because Intel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at some point is going to stop making whatever ancient CPUs it has that point is probably soon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they’re gonna have to stop like it’s like they’re gonna have to like finally put something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else

⏹️ ▶️ John in here can that screen manufacturer stop making that screen please

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so we can

⏹️ ▶️ John get

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it from there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and and yeah and if if they were do such a thing I definitely think that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree with the rest of the predictions I’ve heard which is that it will not be mentioned it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would it would probably it would be barely indicated even on the website there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John might be a new tag on it right yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at best like I think that would be the only change like I wouldn’t expect a retina I wouldn’t expect USB

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see I would expect no other modernization of this platform except Skylake

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guts or even or KB Lake, but probably even Skylake because like they don’t even want to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too modern with what they’re putting in here. So yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not expect big things there. Just a very basic update. And if you are a fan of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ancient MacBook Air platform, that actually would be a pretty nice computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t care about anything modern or retina. And you don’t have eyes. Right, yeah, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagine if they don’t actually change the case size or the battery size,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gonna get incredible battery life. Yeah, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what I’m saying. It’s the danger of that thing. The longer you keep it around, the more people realize, if they just put a retina

⏹️ ▶️ John screen on this thing, it would be Apple’s best-selling laptop again.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Don’t tell

⏹️ ▶️ John anybody. We wanted to buy these other things for way more money. Well, the sad part is it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably still is Apple’s best-selling laptop. Yeah, I know, because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John cheap. But you know what I mean? would be the one that we… Back when we were all recommending 13-inch

⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air as like a default recommendation, right? We’d be in those times again.

⏹️ ▶️ John All right,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do we think about the iPad rumors?

⏹️ ▶️ John You just skipped over the Mac Mini, let’s just say no updates.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco definitely not. Was that seriously an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option in

⏹️ ▶️ John there? I mean, here’s the problem. All the stuff we’ve gone through, so many things were like, oh, maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ John or they could do this, but they can’t. There’s not enough time in the keynote for all of this, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but so like, you know, the MacBooks, I guarantee you, we just spent more time talking about the MacBook Pros than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they wouldn’t mention that. But like, even just the stuff that we have mentioned, like

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s only so much time. They got a lot of stuff to cover. Whether or not there’s a Siri tube thing, I just feel like this

⏹️ ▶️ John is, we’ve overstuffed the thing with things that we think there are over 50% chance

⏹️ ▶️ John of being mentioned in the keynote already. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And keep in mind also, like the keynote is going to also have a ton of time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco consumed by things like retail updates. Like on the talk show, Gruber and Dallaran were speculating

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like maybe this is when they announce a major retail thing and then maybe they have Angela

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Arons out on stage and like that all sounds very plausible. There’s probably also gonna be some kind of, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jeff Williams like social, medical, environmental good initiative, something like that. Like so there’s gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be time with that and there’s gonna be demos of any new stuff they have and there’s gonna be all these segments that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will take up a lot of time And so the stuff we’re talking about is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be squeezed into little intermediate sections between it all. So we’re gonna sit here spending

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two and a half hours on this, but they’re gonna spend 20 minutes on what we’re talking about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here for two and a half hours.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think if they have a lot of announcements, I think what they’ll do is they’ll end up squeezing out the

⏹️ ▶️ John less tech-focused things. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in

⏹️ ▶️ John years where they have a lot of those, especially if it’s tied to one of the tech announcements slime, but not that they feel like filler,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t have the luxury of an extended segment about

⏹️ ▶️ John health monitoring thing or whatever, right? Unless it’s tied to, oh, and by the way, here’s the new Apple Watch

⏹️ ▶️ John with a glucose measuring thing. Like, that’s the only time you get to have that segment. Or if you have a kid who doesn’t have a lot of stuff in

⏹️ ▶️ John it and they need some time to fill, they’ll do that. But if anything close to what we’ve gone through is there, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have to be super efficient to be like, we got a lot of stuff to get to, there’s this, there’s this. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what, for the Tim Cook’s little thing where he comes out and says stuff, I expect his spiel to be,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve got a jam-packed thing, we have a lot of stuff to get to. He always says that, but to actually mean it or to emphasize it slightly

⏹️ ▶️ John more

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey before he

⏹️ ▶️ John gets off stage the parade of other executives come out.

iPad hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so any thoughts on iPad hardware?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So my prediction is that this is this year’s iPad event.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there’s going to be iPads in the fall. I think this is the iPad event for the year because it goes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in with all the software advances that they’re announcing.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s so much time left in the keynote, you might as well, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Exactly, yeah, yeah, might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well shove in there. You know, I think the incredible rumors,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly strong rumors about this 10.5 inch or whatever it is 10 point whatever inch iPad being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically the new the new 10 inch class size just bigger screen roughly same body shape

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and size that is so incredibly strongly rumored it’s very likely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be true I think what we see basically is the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new 10.5 is the new high-end iPad Pro I think the 9.7 goes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically unchanged and just has its price dropped a little bit because if If you look now in the lineup, we mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple episodes ago, there’s this massive price gap between the new cheap 9.7 inch iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the iPad Pro and like the 9.7. It’s 329 to 600. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the price jump there. It’s a huge price jump. So something’s up,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that seems like a temporary thing that we’re waiting to be filled in with that gap by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other things or by changes. So I’m guessing basically the existing 9.7 get dropped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in price probably a hundred bucks. So it’s not going to close the entire gap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it’s not going to come all the way down to like four hundred or anything, but you know it’ll go from six hundred to five hundred

⏹️ ▶️ Marco starting price. That’s my best guess there. So you have the 329 base one, you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five hundred for the iPad Pro, nobody cares for the iPad Mini anymore, sorry Casey, and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new ten point whatever will be six hundred. my best guess. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco question, one question I have though, is the 12.9 dead? I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a very strong chance of this. I think there’s a very strong chance the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 12.9 gets no update and is basically left for dead similar to the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John mini.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll never hear the end of that on certain mother podcasts. I know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well no they’re all gonna switch to the 10 point whatever because it’s gonna be the same screen resolution in a smaller body. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all have 9.7s because they’re better. All of the 12.9 users

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that are like like like I Mike and Vatishi like they all also bought 9.7s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in many ways like them better because the 9.7 is a way better size to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually hold.

⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of hope they kill the 12.9 and make an even bigger one because you know I want bigger. I know you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want that but that’s a different thing though like I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what what I noticed with the 12.9 and part of this is because I actually did resell the one that I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought at a substantial loss. What I noticed with 12.9 is that very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly after release it was being indefinitely discounted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a large amount of money at places like Best Buy and Target. And Apple does this sometimes to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of unload things at lower prices that aren’t selling very well. Like Apple Apple didn’t want the PR,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe, of dropping the price so soon, but it was within a very short

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time of release that these other retailers that work closely with Apple and sell very large volumes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were suddenly able to sell these things at like $150 below retail or $200 below retail.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this wasn’t like a temporary weekend sale. It was like this was just kind of the new price. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seemed like there was quite a fire sale going on in the 12.9 very soon after which released that never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stopped. So I’m guessing it did not sell to apples expectations

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I and I really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that there’s a very good chance that they that if they’re able to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cram in the functionality of the twelve nine into something with that ten point five

⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch screen into a nine point seven inch style body

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John which I will which they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which all of the rumors say that that’s exactly what they’ve done. I’m guessing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the 12.9 is not long for this world because well,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you got to remember Tim Cook’s Apple. All that means is they’ll just keep selling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it right. But but what I’m saying is I bet it doesn’t get an update

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but but it’s more than that though right because even though this Phantom 10

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever inch iPad is theoretically the same screen resolution screen resolution is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the same as as screen size and that’s That’s why the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini is the same resolution as a full-size iPad, and by that I mean the 9.7-inch iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But some people like the 9.7, and some people like the portability of the mini. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I don’t think just because this Phantom 10-inch iPad will have the same resolution as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad Mega, I don’t think that that by default means that the 12-inch iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro just goes away. I think there are people like Vatici, like CGP Grey,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Mike that want a 12-inch iPad Pro in their stable of 504 iPads.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Vatici will switch.

⏹️ ▶️ John Remember, 10 point whatever is much closer to 12.9 than the mini is to the 9.7, right,

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of area. I think all those people you listed, Vatici

⏹️ ▶️ John just wants the productivity, right? And I think he might take the size reduction as a win. just

⏹️ ▶️ John needs to be able to have two full-size things next to each other and blah blah blah he’ll get that in a 10.5 um

⏹️ ▶️ John like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco he’s still young eyes

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah aside from setting aside the random people that we happen to know uh market wise

⏹️ ▶️ John the the selling point of a 12.9 over a 10 point something that

⏹️ ▶️ John has the same resolution maybe maybe arvin kumade

⏹️ ▶️ John for for artists that you just want a bigger you know a bigger canvas to draw on because you’re you know, physically moving

⏹️ ▶️ John the stylus over the cell, which is again, why are you for an even bigger one? But I’m having

⏹️ ▶️ John a hard time thinking of someone outside that

⏹️ ▶️ John that problem domain, who would actually prefer

⏹️ ▶️ John a 12.9 over a 10 point something with exactly the same resolution, especially if they don’t update

⏹️ ▶️ John the 12.9 internals. And again, getting back to Tim Cook’s Apple maybe they just continue to sell the 12.9 because

⏹️ ▶️ John why not and some people still want it but it’s really getting if

⏹️ ▶️ John that 10 point whatever comes out it’s really pressing hard up against the 12.9 and it’s pressing hard against a product that

⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t been updated um yeah i don’t know things think

⏹️ ▶️ John things don’t look good for the future of that product i really hope things look good for the future

⏹️ ▶️ John of a larger size ipad they just need to they just need to widen the the gap a little bit because they’re getting encroached from

⏹️ ▶️ John below.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will also predict on the iPad section I would like to see updates

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the pencil and the keyboard. If they do I would expect based on what I just said basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco damning the 12.9 into you know nothingness I would expect that it would only come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in to the new 10.5 inch size. Maybe the 9.7 would also get it if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it It could be the same size like for the keyboard, but I’m guessing we get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pencil two and a keyboard two with improvements kind of all around.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not like massive earth shattering improvements, but improvements. The keyboard, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know, better key somethings, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I loved Gruber’s idea of the keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that idea that Gruber kind of branched from it on the talk show and then wrote up a big post. I love the idea of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco track pad that’s only used for like cursor movement. That’s an awesome idea. I don’t think they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do it this year, but maybe in the future. That’s a great idea. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the pencil, I would love to see improvements for the pencil.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco First, the smallest improvement, the biggest gain for me would be if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were some easier, better way to carry the pencil with the iPad. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sequel to the keyboard cover could have a pencil slot somewhere in it. Maybe. I think it’s unlikely.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but something that’s more likely with today’s Apple that maybe the Pencil 2

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets better battery life.

⏹️ ▶️ John Eh, it’s not bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That chart is really fast. It’s bad if you don’t constantly use it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you carry it around with you. Then the battery life is really bad because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Pencil has no on-off switch. It basically tries to intelligently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco manage its power state based on things like motion and proximity to your iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you carry it in the same bag as your iPad or if it kinda hangs out on a table or kinda next to your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad, the battery’s always dead. Because it’s always nearby and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of in motion and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John ready to go. You don’t get

⏹️ ▶️ John the alerts that tell you your pencil battery’s running low and remind you to plug it in?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry, your battery’s always alerting you that it’s 5% full. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could really benefit from certain things that I don’t think Johnny and I would ever add to it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like a power switch. I think it would strongly benefit from a power switch. I don’t see that happening. So

⏹️ ▶️ John what do you think about smart connector or magnetic connections or other Microsoft Surface-y style things?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s, I agree that’s a problem, like what the hell do you do with your pencil? And I don’t think the solution is a bunch of loops or

⏹️ ▶️ John pockets in cases to shove it in. I want to be able to magnetically clip it, hopefully in a way

⏹️ ▶️ John that is still charging the thing. But I mean, they could have done that in the original release and they decided not to, which makes me think they

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to put holes in the side of their precious pencil to deal with the smart connector. Like, it’s sitting right there it’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John place that provides power that has a magnetic connection points but it’s just too big and unwieldy

⏹️ ▶️ John for them to ward up their phone with it but I also think that there’s got to be a better solution for charging

⏹️ ▶️ John than the little you know the little spiny horn that we when you plug the pencil into

⏹️ ▶️ John your iPad and it makes this terrible ungainly horrifyingly breakable arrangement of hardware

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean the pencil right now is it really embodies is much of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the skeptical take of a Johnny Ive design, where it looks like a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beautiful object in isolation, but the way you have to actually use it has lots of design flaws.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of them is, yes, it does still roll. It is weighted, doesn’t roll very far sometimes, but it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does roll. The biggest design flaw by far for me is that cap. That cap on the end

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is very easily lost. If you drop it, it will break, the ring will pop out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, it, it, and it, the fact that you then, while charging it, have to take this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cap off and you have nowhere to put it, it’s not captive in any way, it doesn’t hang onto anything, it doesn’t go anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, it’s just begging to be lost as you charge the pencil. Not to mention, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the aforementioned way you charge the pencil. Um, you know, either you have to have this weird,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, gender changer adapter on a lightning plug somewhere, on a lightning cable somewhere,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to charge it from a cable, then you have another tiny white precious thing that you can easily lose because there’s nowhere to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep it. Or you do the thing where you shove it into the bottom of your iPad and have it sticking out and as you mentioned,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of crazy looking and really seems very dangerous and is very unnerving and doesn’t charge as quickly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So charging the Apple Pencil is just a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco series of frustration and form over function

⏹️ ▶️ Marco design choices. And this would be alleviated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely if they could have one that didn’t need to be charged as often. So, and I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s much more likely than Johnny Ive adding buttons or a reasonable charging method.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just want it to magnetically attach to everything. I want it to magnetically attach to the smart cover if you have one. I want it magnetically attached

⏹️ ▶️ John to the actual device if you don’t have it. I want it to inductively charge through those things. That’d be great. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not coming, I think. There are pretty strong rumors of an actual pencil revision, right? I forget what the

⏹️ ▶️ John rumored things that they were improving about it. Maybe the charging thing was changed, but all of our wish lists

⏹️ ▶️ John for pencils is surely not coming. Um, because again, like it’s not like the smart

⏹️ ▶️ John connector didn’t exist when the pencil came out. It did and they chose not to use it for various reasons. So I don’t see them

⏹️ ▶️ John changing their mind on that. But but yeah, like the, um, what would

⏹️ ▶️ John you call it? The logistics, the packaging, the the in Marco camera parlance, the handling of the pencil is pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John awful.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And the smart connector is wonderful. One of the reasons why I enjoy the smart connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard so much is that I never have to worry about its power state.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco When it’s connected, it’s on. It has no battery life. It’s amazing. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m using my iPad, I want to use the keyboard, I can just use the keyboard. I never have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about it. I never have to wait for it to charge. I never go to it and find it uncharged. It’s just,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a thing that is no longer a concern. And so anything that can bring the pencil closer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that would be a huge upgrade for everyday pencil usability.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anything else on iPad?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so. Again, I think this is the iPad event for the year. I would not expect to see, like, if the 10-point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever inch iPad is announced, you know, next week, I would not expect to see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other iPad hardware released this year.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this will absolutely be the WWDC of iPad software.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will go on record as saying I do not think we’re going to see hardware. I think it’ll be in the fall.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s possible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. iPhone, obviously no new hardware.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s definitely the fall. Yeah. So if you think about like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of what we’ve pushed to the fall, I think makes for a pretty good event. So like what we pushed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the fall so far is iPhone hardware, almost certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMacs, maybe Mac Pro info, but probably not. And then,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we haven’t talked about the watch or TV yet? My best guess is that watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and TV both have hardware in the fall. And then there also might be things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the rumored Apple pay peer to peer thing where you can pay people directly with Apple pay. So if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about that, that could be a fall event right there. New iPhone massive iPhone year, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new iPhone is most of the event. Person to person Apple pay, minor revision to the watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 4k Apple TV with 4K iTunes content and IMAX. That’s a fall event.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you don’t need to also shove in iPads and everything else into that. That’s enough

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think the iPads will go to fall only if they’re not ready.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think they would delay them for the,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, I think they would announce them if they’re going to ship any time in the next three months.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if they’re not, then fall.

tvOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so software for the Apple TV, anything?

⏹️ ▶️ John The content deals is what we care about, because like, you know, the software and the remote suck and we all hate them and

⏹️ ▶️ John we have complaints. But like, what makes that device more or less valuable if they’re not going

⏹️ ▶️ John to change the hardware? It’s not as if they can put another new interface. It’s all about

⏹️ ▶️ John the content. It’s all about I mean, I suppose the only software thing they could do is say, Hey, remember that single sign on thing that we touted

⏹️ ▶️ John and no one signed up for? Well, we got some and some of the important people to sign up for it. That’s definitely

⏹️ ▶️ John the only big software win that they could trot out that would have an appreciable effect on

⏹️ ▶️ John the life of people who are newly buying Apple TV is like to not have to go through that

⏹️ ▶️ John sign and type these letters that appear on your whatever thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think TVs, it’s gonna be, I think, a very quiet year for the TV. For the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least for the summer, I would expect, maybe announcements of new content deals. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll hear about that Amazon deal, who knows? They’ll announce some new partners that will all be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable companies and TV providers that none of us subscribe to and now you can get to all these things with the TV app, but you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still can’t get to Netflix or whatever. It’s going to be like moderate updates to the TV app thing. They’re going to really push

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hard, but it’s going to not have a lot behind it. I do expect this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be the year of new Apple TV hardware that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can almost certainly play 4K video and would probably then at the event come with announcement

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of 4K content deals with both iTunes and maybe other things like Netflix and Amazon.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I would expect that to be in the fall event, not next week. So very quiet on the TVOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco front is my prediction. I don’t expect any massive new APIs for developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything. Honestly, I think the developer story for TVOS has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely not panned out. And I think at this point it’s pretty clear it probably isn’t going to largely pan out. I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much done and limited to major video apps and a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very small handful of games.

⏹️ ▶️ John Any time they wanna do 24 frames per second output on the Apple TV, just

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sitting there

⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for them. You don’t even have to do it in 4K. You can do it on the old model, anytime.

⏹️ ▶️ John My radar that I found for that I checked is still sitting there marked as duplicate, never

⏹️ ▶️ John to be heard from again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as with all things radar.

watchOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey WatchOS, I would expect just a small evolution of what we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to, kind of a deprioritization of apps, a continued

⏹️ ▶️ Casey prioritization of notifications and things like that. Are we going to get watch faces this year? I say no.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had that as a stretch goal. I wrote maybe in italics, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco third-party watch faces, but I think it’s unlikely.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I do think too, like, you know, again, I think this is going to be a pretty quiet year for watchOS 2. Last year

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a big year. They had a lot to do and they really did it last year. With watchOS 3, that was a major update,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco solved a lot of the watch’s major problems in a pretty good way. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this year, I would be surprised if we see more major progress.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like this is probably going to be like a down year for now. Maybe they’ll do something like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco improve the design of the weird honeycomb app screen or you know maybe they’ll add

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like third-party watch faces but I think the more likely long-term goal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to add features such as an always-on like dim clock mode

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey sleep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking or you know the rumored diabetes tracking thing whether that’s a separate add-on or whether

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s part of the watch who knows but all of these things would require new hardware like they’re not gonna add

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new like always on screen mode that the current models don’t have the battery power to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still have good battery life for any like all day and I think the having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen always be on even to a very dim level and even if nothing’s animated and even if it hardly ever updates

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s still a massive increase in power draw so I’m guessing the current models

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably can’t do that and still have good battery life for anything else so I’m guessing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all of that stuff would wait for new hardware, which should almost certainly be in the fall. Not now.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you can fix your audio player APIs, all your audio dreams, right? That wouldn’t be in the

⏹️ ▶️ John keynote, obviously, but that could happen to WNBC for watchOS. It’s relevant to you, at least.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could. You know, man, I would love if they would make it easier for me to make a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good watch app, because right now I made a watch app. It’s okay. Like with local playback,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s okay. And it could be good if they would, you know, bring over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few more of the iOS audio APIs, things like getting remote control events from headphones,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could use the play pause or back forward buttons on your headphones and that would actually control it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Volume control of the system volume level, not just the local app zero to one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume level that I have now. Any kind of now playing center access like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have on iOS. There’s lots of things they could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do there, but I just think those are probably a really low priority for them because I don’t I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think anything on the watch is a priority that doesn’t have to do with health or notifications

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s probably with good reason because those are the things that almost everyone’s using their watch for and those are the things that the watch is really good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for so I think those things get priority everything else is probably pretty far

⏹️ ▶️ Marco down the list pretty secondary so I wouldn’t expect a lot of motion there

⏹️ ▶️ John where I forgot if you had thought that watch where does the watch go like the rumored watch with

⏹️ ▶️ John the special bands and you know the next watch hardware revision does that go to the fall or is that go to next year?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suspect fall and you know whether it’s gonna have like you know the the fancy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco blood sugar one or whether that’s you know a separate thing or I don’t know I have no idea

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there from people who’ve been writing about this recently it seems like that’s a ridiculously hard problem to solve and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many companies have tried and it takes a very long time so it wouldn’t surprise me if that part doesn’t come soon,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they did watches last fall, and so if they’re going to do something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would require new hardware with the watch platform, things like sleep tracking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or always on face of so that you could like things that need that would need better battery life, things like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this fall is a totally plausible and reasonable time to do that. Not to mention the fact that it’s usually a big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco holiday seller. The watch sells a lot over the holidays, even more so than phones and iPads, I think from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on little bits piece I’ve been able to pick up here and there.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the new iPod.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it is a massive holiday seller, so it would make sense for them to really try to get updates out there in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fall event, right in time for the holiday shopping.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with everything you said, Marco.

Services

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so to kind of round this out and end the episode,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe some, I don’t know how to describe it, but like some touchy feely or like…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, we’re not done. We’re not here yet. We’re talking about services.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. This is the show that will not end. I’ll add it to the document. Okay.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, services, I think continued push to iCloud all the things and continued

⏹️ ▶️ Casey grumbling from everyone involved about how successful that will be.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So basically, my list of services includes a lot of things I’ve already said, things like heavy push towards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud storage and getting you to buy those plans. Massive push to Apple Music.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, it’s going to be, as always, is going to Apple. He’s going to get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of keynote time. It might not all be. It might not go smoothly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s going to be a lot of keynote time. I expected to get another redesign. It’s still going to be confusing,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the keynote time will be like Apple Music. You’re home for television shows. Right,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because isn’t that the pitch now? Like it’s Apple music,

⏹️ ▶️ John come for our TV shows? What?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, right. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I totally expect them to do incredibly heavy-handed promotion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke and anything else they might be, they might want to announce

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any new production.

⏹️ ▶️ John So you, but you really think you’re making a joke about the music app redesign? Do you really think that’s gonna happen

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco again?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I really, I really think it’s gonna happen again. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think the music app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco redesign is the new iTunes redesign like it’s gonna happen just every year it’s never gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean I have to disable connect to my toolbar again probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever new social network they launched this time so yeah so my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco prediction is very heavy-handed promotion of their app music shows of app music itself

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least one really awkward skit or video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something just really heavy-handed and

⏹️ ▶️ John awkward. I hope there is just not time for this in the keynote. Not that I hope that it doesn’t come, but I really

⏹️ ▶️ John hope that there is not time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they’ll make time. Beyond that, iCloud Drive, I expect,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said, I expect it to be a big focus. I’m hoping that comes with some additional features.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the big things for iCloud Drive, when I used it for a couple, I am now back on Dropbox just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for various workflow reasons, but when I was using only iCloud Drive for for that month

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or two. The biggest things I missed were shared folders and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco public share links for files that I could just like get a share link to this file and send it to somebody. And again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shared folders for things like, let me share this folder with you guys and we can drop files here and work them together.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is something that Dropbox and its competitors have offered basically forever. It’s a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big feature. It’s not easy to do these things, but if Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco added share links and shared folders, Those are major steps towards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more people being able to use iCloud Drive as their primary document sync thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to replace or never even use in the first place things like Dropbox. So that I really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope they add that. That is I think within the realm of possibility.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know these are the kinds of things that Apple typically has not done aggressively or well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they already have the concept of shared editing in notes and there are shared

⏹️ ▶️ Marco photo albums and photos. So there is this concept of inviting people to collaborate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with you on a resource that is in iCloud. They have this infrastructure already in certain places.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s get one more. Let’s get shared folders in iCloud Drive. And I’d actually say the shared folders

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are more likely for them to do than the public share links for files because that’s more of like a…

⏹️ ▶️ John A web thing and Apple’s allergic to the web, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And it has piracy concerns and things like that. So I’m not sure they would do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s less likely, but shared folders would be a huge thing. I really hope they do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still terrified of iCloud Drive. Me too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Me too. Also, one thing they might do for iCloud Drive is Time Machine,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because a lot of the other services like this have versioning for the files, some kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco recovery or point in time or versioning for resources that are stored in things like Dropbox. It would be nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they had that in iCloud Drive, and they don’t now.

⏹️ ▶️ John So they’re playing catch up with a company that refused to be purchased by them that they called just a feature back when Steve Jobs was still alive.

⏹️ ▶️ John Here we are so many years later and they’re still catching up with that basic feature set of Dropbox.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, sometimes Jobs was wrong. You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know, he did try to buy

⏹️ ▶️ John them. Like it’s not, it’s more of a sour grape situation there. I feel like he’s trying, he was trying to

⏹️ ▶️ John bring down that you should be happy that we’re even talking to you. Your thing is just a feature, but they were interested in buying them.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like he was really saying your thing is, you know. He was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to get it for a good price So yeah, so I definitely think it could benefit strongly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from these things If and if they called this time machine for iCloud Drive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus they called it versioning who knows doesn’t matter

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s confused That’s confusing, but we’ll say do we have to go into a starfield. I missed the starfield. Do you miss the starfield?

⏹️ ▶️ John I do a little bit. Yeah, because the current time machine interface is so boring and

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, but it doesn’t work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is less exciting I also think service-wise, photos

⏹️ ▶️ Marco should and probably will have finally syncing of the metadata

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the object recognition, faces, places, all that stuff as we talked about last week.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also think that it is very likely we’re going to see a little bit of promotion for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple News. It’s a thing Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey launched that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you know, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going somewhere, but I don’t think it’s going massively quickly there. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re going to see a little, you know, some kind of answers of some kind of minor improvements here, and they’re going to push us to use it a little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit more. And finally, in my services category, I think we’re going to see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stretch goal here. Group FaceTime. Finally, we’ve had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John a couple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple little rumors here and there. Teachers and talking about it a lot over the last year. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is finally the time for group FaceTime. Here’s hoping that that gets in.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We had group iChat forever ago. Yeah. You know, that’s now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John finally…

⏹️ ▶️ John And speaking of iChat, I know this is like a dorky thing, but I would like to be able to share a document in the old parlance,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Yeah. Multiple people and also, hey, let’s all look at this photo together, like to pull a photo from photos so we

⏹️ ▶️ John can all see it, right? That’s a feature that I frequently wish for.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe that’d be part of like the whole file collaboration or, you know, the file management

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stuff. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John collaboration,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I just

⏹️ ▶️ John want to say, like, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pointed one iOS device at the screen of another to like show my

⏹️ ▶️ John parents who I’m FaceTiming with a photo. Yeah. So they don’t have to like leave the app and like because

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do both of us like we’re you know we have technology here I should be able to put throw a photo up here yeah that that sounds like

⏹️ ▶️ John the most keynote worthy feature of all the service things because I really hope that they don’t talk about Apple Music but multi-person

⏹️ ▶️ John FaceTime so easy to demo crowd-pleaser everybody loves it if they have it it’s a shoe in for the keynote.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah and then finally my final prediction for the night

iMessage apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we will hear absolutely nothing about iMessage apps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have they were announced last year, they launched, we got some cool fun stickers out of it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think the the app platform itself beyond stickers has gone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically nowhere. There’s a small chance we might see stickers on the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John version.

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac iMessage parody would be another thing that they won’t do because they don’t care that much about the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and it would never get the full-blown app platform. I think it would, at best, it would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only get stickers. But even that, I just think the iMessage platform,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it ended up being kind of like the watch. It ended up being used for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much smaller subset of what it could do than what I think they probably intended

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or guessed. They massively over-designed the system for apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to plug into iMessage when in reality, what most people wanna do is have a few stickers and call

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it a day. It doesn’t, and that hasn’t been helped by the fairly awkward

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and cumbersome and unintuitive interface within messages to browse and add

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and manage your different message apps. Like there’s room for that to make it a lot better and maybe this would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco change things, but I don’t think it would change things enough. I think ultimately iMessage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps were a thing that, You know, they tried, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think—similar to tvOS being like a massive app platform, I just don’t think it’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I use the GIFWrapped app in every capacity, including the iMessage

⏹️ ▶️ Casey app, a lot. I was really into stickers for like a day.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It wasn’t a day, but it was very briefly that I really enjoyed stickers, and now I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost find it surprising anytime somebody uses one in a conversation I’m in.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have anything against them. I’m not opposed to them like I think a lot of people were when they first came

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. But I too have been largely underwhelmed by

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMessage offerings with the exception of GiftWrapped, which is as perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it can be given the world in which it lives.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in a lot of ways, the iMessage apps and watch apps and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even TV apps all suffer from the long-standing thing I always say, which is don’t fight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco against the smartphone or don’t bet against the smartphone. In most of these cases, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could go and use this other kind of app for this app that you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to do, but in most of these cases, it’s easier and faster and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s already in in your head, you already have the habits to just go launch the app and just do whatever you wanna do from the app,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like from the main app, rather than going to these weird little extension points and doing stuff there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are some cases where it makes sense to do that, but I think those cases are a lot fewer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lesser used than what maybe Apple intended or guessed when launching

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these platforms. And in reality, almost every messages app I’ve seen isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stickers, you could just do it from the app almost as well, if not better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s turned out that’s just what most people do. And it is possible to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make an awesome messages app, but again, like the system of managing and installing them and everything is so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cumbersome that a lot of people just don’t do it. So I think, you know, they’re fighting against

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the convenience and inertia of the full-blown app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which everyone knows how to do already and everyone is already using for these things it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know I feel like it’s a losing battle there

⏹️ ▶️ John speaking of Casey and stickers and messages it reminds me of the one feature of iOS that they do need to add that

⏹️ ▶️ John will benefit phone users and everybody emoji search

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John point that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco crowd pleaser

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s almost like they think they added it when they added that thing where it suggests the emoji like oh we have a mojo search just start

⏹️ ▶️ John typing the word and we’ll give you the suggested list of emojis and it’s kind of true but

⏹️ ▶️ John that just feels like the wrong way to do it like you know how many times I drag downward on the emoji

⏹️ ▶️ John picker expecting a search field to appear and forgetting for the millionth time that it doesn’t that is the one thing

⏹️ ▶️ John on iOS that you can’t drag downward to see a search field appear at the top Oh emoji search like

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I just need to memorize where everything is but I spent so long trying to find popcorn the

⏹️ ▶️ John other day before I just gave up and did a web search for it so I can copy and paste it into a tweet.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness, that’s so sad.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Now it’s in the

⏹️ ▶️ John food section. Can’t find it. Tiny little images, too many of them, scrolling, scrolling.

Closing statements

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So what else are we looking forward to? Maybe that wouldn’t be covered in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the keynote or, you know, something that’s different. So I’ll seed the conversation with a couple of thoughts.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m interested to see what San Jose is like. I’m kind of excited that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems to be more involved with the ancillary goings on around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the conference. They’re putting up a booth for podcasters, which we will not be leveraging

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in part, but not exclusively because Marco doesn’t have a WWDC ticket and it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stands to reason you need one to get through the door to go to the studio. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s certainly… Well, I think the bigger limitation is that it’s limited to 60-minute blocks. There’s no way our show is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco under an hour.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, certainly not, given that we’ve just spent, you know, two and a half hours blabbing about what could possibly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey happen, let alone what will and did. But anyway, that’s kind of cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’ve been over the years embracing community events like Layers and App Camp for girls

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the talk show and thing and alt Conf and things of that nature. Um, so I’m,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m looking forward to seeing kind of what San Jose brings to the table and what it has to offer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And additionally, and completely wildly unrelated, I am super excited

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to play Mario Kart against all my friends in person. And speaking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Marco made a reference to his packing list for WWDC

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and actually had dropped an image in the chat room, which I forgot to add to the show notes, so probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey won’t be there. But I spied something interesting on that list, Marco. Would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you like to tell us about that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The list ends with Nintendo Switch and Pro Controller, question mark?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whose Nintendo Switch would you be bringing, Marco? TIFF’s.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you sure? Yeah. No, I didn’t get a second one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey No, I’m surprised.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s our family switch. Tiff is a wonderful, wonderful wife. Wow. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco she, upon hearing the previous discussions, she decided to grant me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco permission to take her switch. Did Adam

⏹️ ▶️ John grant you permission? Does he even

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think he knows. We will find out. Just

⏹️ ▶️ John wait until he says, time to play Zelda, mommy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, then you’re gonna pay for that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m hoping that doesn’t happen, but I know in reality it probably will, that’s it’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just do me a big favor here and I I will not forget that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no that’s awesome that’s that’s very kind of her

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right so John what are you looking forward to in the not keynote

⏹️ ▶️ Casey parts of the conference

⏹️ ▶️ John earlier shows I said warmer weather but now that I’ve actually seen a weather report maybe it’s too warm

⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s getting to the point where I’ll feel like I’ll be hot outside but in

⏹️ ▶️ John the blasting air conditioning of the indoor spaces I’ll still need to carry with me something warmer

⏹️ ▶️ John so I don’t freeze to death. So I guess I suppose that’s preferable to the WWDC thing where the outdoors

⏹️ ▶️ John is freezing. We’ll see. But anyway, at any rate, there should be more sun

⏹️ ▶️ John at the very least. And maybe people will actually get to see the various nerdy T-shirts that I wear because I’ll actually not be wearing

⏹️ ▶️ John T-shirt underneath the long sleeve thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Excellent.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m incredibly excited to do all these podcasts, to do live shows out there,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to meet people, to laugh at how big John’s wallet is. All the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey wonderful things we get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do when we meet in person, I’m looking forward to that. It’s going to be… I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you my metal credit card. Yeah. It’s going to be fun. And I like seeing everybody, seeing all my friends,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco making new friends and… Yeah, I’m excited about layers. I’m going to that. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be fun. And yeah, it’s going to be a very, very busy week, but busy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all the good ways. We’re We’re going to have lots of, you know, presumably lots of good, exciting stuff coming out of Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re going to have lots of new APIs to play with. We’re going to have a huge batch of new people installing my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app on beta one and telling me how it breaks and complaining that I haven’t fixed it yet. It’s going to be glorious

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I look forward to this week every year. And yeah, thanks to our three sponsors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this week, Casper, Betterment, and Jet. we will see you next week live

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from WVDC.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm,

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ John C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and T. Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to

⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check broadcast so long

Post-show: San Jose fashion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So is it legal to wear shorts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in San Jose? Because like I know, maybe we should ask the Europeans, I know a lot of people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco consider shorts to be like a huge fashion faux pas and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that men should never wear shorts. Why are we asking the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Europeans? This is America, damn

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, they don’t really have weather over there. They don’t have like real heat. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t even have air conditioning. Like, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey don’t know what they’re talking about.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They are wholly unqualified to weigh in on this particular discussion.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I don’t care what they have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say. So, because it seems like the weather is going to be in the 80s, right? And whatever it is in Celsius, I don’t care,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you guys don’t have hot weather. So, in America, it’s going to be like in the 80s, right? Because to me, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 80s means shorts.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if you’re spending your whole day inside an air-conditioned building, maybe you won’t be indoors as much as we are,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m… That’s my concern, like, that I actually will be hot

⏹️ ▶️ John outside with pants, with pants but that there’s no way I would wear shorts not for fashion reasons just because I would be freezing

⏹️ ▶️ John inside what is surely the super duper air-conditioned whatever convention center where all the sessions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. I see this is the problem with shorts is that you want to wear them outside

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you can’t wear them in air conditioning because then you freeze. Like and not to mention the fact that like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco half the world thinks that you’re committing some kind of massive fashion crime by wearing shorts. Also I will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mount a defense of cargo shorts. I think that non-cargo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shorts look a little bit weird. Like, cargo shorts, I admit, are not the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco best looking things in the world, but I think non-cargo shorts look weirdly flat.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, I think you have a cargo shorts fetish or something. I think non-cargo shorts look like shorts.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh my God,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, do you have any idea how much email you slash we are going to get thanks to this? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey care, I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in California, I’ll delete it all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t answer email in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey California. Do you answer email ever? No. Yeah, I, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve gotten accustomed to the completely bananas San Francisco weather,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which has perks, but also has plenty of drawbacks too. This is going to be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a definite change. And I think what it’s going to amount to is I will probably end

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up choosing comfort inside over comfort outside, but you will probably see me rolling

⏹️ ▶️ Casey into these events with a light sheen on my face

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John as I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten sweaty walking between buildings.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s gonna be even more sweaty nerds, I feel like that’s a good safe prediction. Sweatier nerds, WWDC 2016, 2017, whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John the hell year it is. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, we’ll see what happens. But I’m looking forward to it. I’m super excited to see you two. I’m super excited to see all our mutual friends.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just, I’m stoked. I’m happy to have a ticket to the big show this year since I missed out last year. Just super

⏹️ ▶️ Casey duper pumped. Beep, beep, beep.