from relay FM this is upgrade episode five hundred and thirteen today's show is brought to you by delete me uni pizza ovens and wild grain my name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow hi Jason hi Mike we're halfway to 1024 just past the 512 mark on our way up to 1024 yeah off we go now I'm back I was away last week thank you very much to Steven and Federica for filling in for me you know how much joy it gave me that you mentioned multiple times that it took both of them to replace me yeah so thank you for your presence who hosted a trench coat yeah exactly well originally the idea was episode 512 we're kind of Steven filling for you he could talk to me about my iPad review and then I discovered over the weekend that one Federico had written a very long article about iPad failings and to he didn't get one to review in time so I proceeded under the assumption that although I thought Federico would be the perfect guess for for that episode because he's got his own stuff and he was he would be prepping under the same embargo with me and all of that that there was no point in even trying to get him on podcast he's got he was he would be just too busy to do it but then I discovered over the weekend that that wasn't the case and so it was so good to be able to get him on for a little bit in there I was up really because he's way out there yep Italy and then and then Steven as well so yeah it was fun yeah it was a good time and I liked that that you have both and I think it was good for the show to have Federico on and to do all of that before we begin today I would like to before we fully begin today I would like to apply our listeners to look at their podcast app because we have refreshed the artwork for upgrade so we tossed our designer here at Relay FM JD Davis to take the old upgrade art the existing upgrade art and just give it a fresh coat of paint we did not want to rebrand the show in any way it's not we're very happy with it but we wanted to give it more of a new feel so we have both upgrade and for upgrade plus we know have more consistent branding between the two as well it's upgrade is in I guess silver or space gray and upgrade plus is in space black I guess and the other I don't know yeah something like that and the artwork looks more like an actual button which is like a power button because that's what the logo is and we've got a nice little glow going on too so they're both new it's available now for you to look at and I don't know it's just it's more of a refresh I think we both thought this upgrade maybe felt like one of the older it was well it was one of the oldest shows on the network so the logo was untouched for 512 episodes on touch yes on absolutely zero had changed and it was maybe time for a refresh and so we've done that and I'm really happy right but we also didn't want to change it I mean we talked about it we actually are very happy with the idea of the of the circle with the button and the arrow and the whole thing and so that was the real challenge in working with JD is like JD change it but don't change it and so I just think it looks nicer and we had a there's there was a really subtle like pattern on the background like a pinstripe and it didn't it didn't really work it didn't really resolve and what it did resolve sometimes it seemed like more like a weird error over it's like this is bad it's just cleaner and better and nice and it makes reference to apples various metal non colors which is delights me yeah so it's a really good stuff thank you JD for that for the amazing work on this one and I hope that you will enjoy a refreshed artwork for the as we barrel towards episode 1024 indeed we have a snow talk question to fully start officially start this week's episode it comes from Daniel who says Jason I couldn't help but notice you casually dropping an old man River reference last week and talking about the iPad Pro which was tote that barge lift that bail Jason what is your favorite musical okay well it's not showboat and in fact I was just making tote that barge lift that bail and like entered the lexicon so I wasn't actually intentionally making reference to Rodgers and Hammerstein although I think technically my official answer for what my favorite musical is is the king and I so Rodgers and Hammerstein but a different one it was my mother's favorite musical my favorite my mom's favorite movie maybe and I have seen it in in twice including once with Yule Brenner when he was sort of returned to the role when I was a kid we went and saw it went down to San Francisco to see it and it's sweet it's very sad at the end the king dies it's very sad yeah I know spoilers for music from the 50s and are there some thematic issues with with the king and I yeah yeah there are but I have a great fondness for it in terms of like a modern I don't know I mean Hamilton's easy answer I love Hamilton it's it's still still doing it for me I still think it's great but but my classic answer is the king and I thank you very much for that answer Jason I assumed you'll say Hamilton to be honest it's my - I did a whole episode on a corner in the sky Queen Rose's podcast about musicals on the incomparable I did a whole episode with her about the king and I so I'll put that in the show as bad as they want yeah I will find it and put it in the show sure I'll find it for you even better thank you so much why doesn't everybody find it and also put it in the show notes if you don't mind thank you so much to Daniel for sending in that question if you would like to send in a snow talk question of your own we need to do is go to upgrade feedback.com someone in got some follow up so first comes from Scott who says on the last episode Jason mentioned that he wished that the keyboard backlight brightness for the magic keyboard is an option in control center well it is it is it turns out the people I was talking to at Apple about it didn't even realize that it was there which is funny but yes there it is there you can put it there and then you can swipe down from control center I still think the point remains that you should be able to do it from the keyboard I also was told that apparently if you are using it and it's off and you are in a dark place it comes on I don't know if that's true or not but I was told that I have not verified that yet I find that kind of amazing if that's true so it may be that I just don't notice and also it's true that I basically leave it off because I very rarely am using it somewhere where I need the backlighting on I generally leave keyboard backlighting off but what I do find valuable is if I'm suddenly I find myself in a place where I need the keyboard backlighting I would really like to be able to just use the little I know the argument there is well if you can't see the keys how can you use them I know where the keys are but I would like to see the backlighting on a little keyboard thing but yes you can put it you can add it to control center through the settings app and then you can I would also argue probably should just sort of be one a secondary control under brightness and not its own little button but you know whatever it's there and you can add it to control center yeah and we get we have some chat room feedback instantly that says yes it does turn on in the dark so there's that too look at that and I just want to say numerous podcasts over the last few few weeks have acted as if there isn't backlighting on the magic keyboard on either one which is funny because it's always been there it's it's like I think I said this last week it's like a baronstein bears kind of thing it's like a Mandela effect thing where everybody sort of has agreed to pretend that the magic keyboard didn't have backlighting but it's always had backlighting the obviously the the smart keyboard thing that was just the fabric can't have it but the magic keyboards have backlighting yeah it was quite funny actually about the the control center thing I was standing for to record the event it was one of the first things he did was check for control center to see if there was a button there I don't know which was funny to me it it is I just I don't know why you don't use a modifier in that for the for the backlight for the lighting brightness controls to have it be the backlighting instead I just I don't know but then again I've had a Wes kind of broken when it comes to global modifier keys show show show show show maybe that's why it makes sense to me in a way that it could detect I mean I'm sure the iPads have brightness sense sure true tones to how you do true tone so it makes sense that they have the ability to do that it's pretty cool nice they've got that wired up even though I've never really I gotta be honest I mostly use the magic keyboard outside in my backyard writing or or any well-lit room in my house during the day when I'm working I'm very rarely working on the iPad at night in the dark right like it just doesn't happen that often I'm not I'm not a I'd a secret black site iPad writer I'm not that so but it's good to know that it's there so there you go. All right next next piece follow up comes in next follow up comes in from Paul who says Jason mentions that he prefers to type on the magic keyboard on the 13 inch iPad but he rocked an 11 inch MacBook for many years was the keyboard on the MacBook not similar in size okay first off I do not rock anything only casey list rocks things I just use them I just wear them I don't rock I just want to I'm just filing as a as a complaint here sorry Paul that you're the one who has prompted me to do this but one of those things that I'm against is referring to the utility of anything utilization of anything as rocking it and I can tell you from my own personality I do not rock anything well literally anything in my life you rock really like a hurricane just so you know okay I know that great here I am like a hurricane I did use an 11 inch MacBook Air for a long time and it's a full size keyboard and all the keys of the right size is mine is my recollection and ever and there are there are shrunk down keys on the 11 inch magic keyboard it's it's it's so okay I'm just gonna say Jason in the chatroom said this is the most old man thing I've heard Jason say honestly using rock to discuss to refer to things that you're doing that's what an old man says every time I hear Casey do it I'm like Casey you're way too old to be saying you rocked a hat don't do it stop it now oh oh man after the show I'm gonna have one of those moments where I have to text Casey and say Casey you gotta listen to the follow-up one upgrade anyway anyway you know he's magic keep I've had magic keyboard some of the keys are like half width and it squished and it doesn't feel right so it is my my what I would say is no to me the 11 inch air was the exact width that you could make a computer and still have a regular keyboard and the size of the 11 inch iPad is too narrow for that but I don't have them with me so I can't like I can't verify this but that's my recollection is that it's just a little bit too small and there's some half the one that bothers I know John Gruber is driven insane by this is the idea that the left bracket key is full width and the right bracket key is half width because it is imbalanced and and he when I saw him in New York he said to me at one point why don't you make them both the same width it's like well because they don't because they you get to the edge it's like writing on it's like John Mulaney thing about writing on a on a big sign and you start like with the letters way too big and then you get to the end and you're like oh no they get to the last key on the keyboard and they're like oh no there's no room left well make it smaller and it's fine it's a little like that that's funny I also wanted to just let our listeners know we have a very small amount of tickets that are still available for our live show in London this coming July to celebrate ten years of relay FM I'm going to be there Jason's going to be there along with many other awesome relay FM hosts so if you will be rocking it Casey maybe rocking it along with us he'll be rocking we'll be rocking together at an actual place where rock music is sometimes played at the Hackney Empire so yeah it's going to be in the 27th of July there are still some tickets available if you want to come and celebrate and rock it out in style with us in London yeah I'll be I'll be rocking a coin where I'll and flipping it maybe maybe maybe probably not it's time for the details whoo Apple has announced a set of accessibility focus features coming in iOS 18 they have continuing their tradition of announcing these ahead of WWDC on global accessibility awareness day which is really good because it gives these items a time to shine whether they're not going to get potentially overshadowed by other things and we get to talk about them and people get to write about them and stuff like that which I think is really great and I wanted to just run through some of these features I think there's some really cool stuff in here first up is eye tracking for iPad and iPhone which uses cameras and sensors to track your eyes and you select things by dwelling on them for a moment so it's called dual control so this is a super cool feature uses the cameras and the sensors in the devices to be able to track your eyes we spoke about this a while ago and I wondered if it could they Apple could do something like this as a way to somehow control a home part of a screen it's like maybe but nevertheless this is a super cool feature and again most of these things I think basically all of them they're somehow machine learning powered yeah I was going to say this seems to me that it's probably using similar algorithms if not the same algorithms that they're using in the vision pro and a vision pro you know the sensors are right up next to your eyes they've got a really clear view and here it's a little bit harder yes but it does feel like this is kind of of a kind and I would also say I'm getting some strong if you remember the pointer the iPad pointer started in the accessibility settings and quite rightly right like the accessibility so here's the thing about accessibility accessibility is important because one everybody probably is going to need some accessibility if they don't now they will need it eventually it's really important to have give as many people access in as many different ways to the things that we use to live our lives as possible and again I'll just say if you're fortunate enough to become an old person and use phrases like I rocked it you will have motion issues or balance issues or other I mean you will because just you'll be rocking older you will use it you'll be yeah you'll be rocking the accessibility settings so it's super important for existing groups but you will become part of those groups at some point in your life as well so you should think about that but also I would say sometimes this is one of those things where apples got interactions that it's not convinced already for the whole world but know that they have direct applications for people who have for example limited mobility issues and so they put them in it's not what I don't want to say is it's like beta testing it because that's not what it is it's more like we don't think that this feature is maybe something that everybody can use right now but we know some people who could really use it and so they should have it but I look at this and I think to myself wow yeah that that home pod with a screen or even just an iPad in your kitchen yeah being able to do some basic interaction with that with gestures or eye movement yeah without touching it is really interesting for the future and this is all I mean I read Shelley Brisbane wrote about this in six colors too they briefed her about it which is great it is just I mean for people with mobility issues to be able to have this extra level of interaction is it's just really cool the idea that you're I mean it's like magic a little bit right which is sort of how I felt about the vision pro and now here it is and other devices where you're just sort of like willing the device to do what you want that's great yeah and like we just had the double tap the Apple Watch double tap right which was it started as a motion control thing on the Apple Watch and is now available in the shipping product is like a feature that you can assign for different things which isn't our met a great feature in the Apple Watch but I do use it every day to start my walking workouts and it's you know I get to some point my walk to and from the studio and it my app watch hits me like it always does and so I just I don't even need to pull my sleeve down I just tap my fingers together and it starts my workout so these things can be very useful even if you don't quote unquote need them for any particular reason but they and I think this is actually one of the things that I really like about Apple's approach to accessibility is they sometimes just create features that everyone can take advantage of like dynamic type for example dynamic type is really helpful if you have vision issues but it's also just good for the general comfort of whatever you would prefer like for me I'm able to take use of a dynamic type to have the text size be smaller on my phone that's what I like so I get more on the screen now I can only do that because dynamic type exists which is ostensibly an accessibility feature well and it lets it lets people set I mean the broader way to view some of these settings is it lets people set settings for their ability level for their capability level so in your case with your eagle vision you can just crank that text down and it's fine and for somebody else they might like my my wife's text is up up a notch well yep I think she's got reading glasses now so she doesn't do that so much but her text all went up a notch so that she could see it more clearly without glasses so I mean it's it's great I mean more stuff should be adaptable remember when I when I did that I think this is not entirely true anymore but when I did that Tesla road trip back in the day for spring break where I borrowed that guy's Tesla and friend of the show by the way not just that guy but well mention his name anyway one of the things that because Lauren again needs reading glasses that we know this is there were literally no text size settings in the Tesla UI I think you can set a large setting now but like how did how that product exists for for five or ten years without like text adjustments like we so we take a lot of things for granted in the apple world but the things like accessibility settings and and dynamic text dynamic type are super important so moving on there is music haptics where the if you're listening to music and music app it will be able to sync to the haptic motor to provide real time vibrations so people can feel the song this is particularly helpful for people who have hearing issues I remember there was a goal in my class when I was in primary school and at music class she would put her hand on the speaker of the of the keyboard so she could fix so she could more better feel in hearing music and I was found that fascinating it's like a nine year old and so the button this into the music app vocal shortcuts so this will allow you to set a phrase to trigger a shortcut without needing to use a wake word for your voice assistant so you can just set a phrase and just say that phrase and your phone is also always listening to that phrase by out for that phrase as well as the other things to invoke Siri so this is a cool feature this is this is the first time right that I wonder if this is enabled by that feature where they took it down so you didn't need to say hey anymore you could just say the name and and summon the beast yeah that you know that they've got that allow you to do you could for example have a wake word to talk to chat GPT or something right you could you could you could also have a shortcut trigger on a hoy or yeah or a hoy telephone if you like yeah that's this could be a game changer right like this is this is one of those things that could really be a huge difference that the ability to arbitrarily set trigger phrases to do things that's wild so I can't wait to see this in in action just be careful with the phrase that you use you know what I mean it's like saying phone off all the time because you set the phrase good morning yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend that wouldn't do that listening for a typical speech so using machine learning to features to for better performance to understand those the speech issues so if you know this is for a variety a wide variety of speech issues that to be able to better understand listeners and they use machine on device machine learning models to do that whether it's waiting for more time or allowing for somebody to repeat something that kind of thing which I think is really cool this one I immediately sent to my wife I imagine a lot of people sent this to somebody in their lives it's good vehicle motion cues so many people many people suffer with motion sickness especially in cars my wife is one of these people she looks at her phone in in what she's in a car for too long or on a train or something it can make her feel unwell so they do this saying I don't fully understand how this works but I'm not a scientist so I was just trusted it does where when you're looking at your phone there are these moving dots that that will like scroll down the side of the screen and they are synced to senses in your phone detect movement which I'm sure are probably the same senses that they use to detect car crashes right like it's all that kind of stuff coming together like Apple I'm sure I've done a lot of work of understanding how vehicles move at this point and so it helps calibrate your body to understanding that there is motion when you're looking at a device to alleviate motion sickness incredible incredible again it's like if this works like I don't think this is something you would necessarily historically consider as a quote unquote accessibility feature right yeah all sorts of things are accessibility right like the whole point of accessibility is some people have an issue that causes them to have problems with some aspect of using the device right fundamentally that's what it is and there's no like gatekeeping or there shouldn't be about like what are the issues what issues matter and what is as a colorblind person I appreciate that there's an accessibility setting for me for my little thing which is I can use the phone you know I can mostly use it just fine but yes occasionally some device doesn't differentiate via a method other than colors and there's a game or something where it says quick Jason this this red light red and this gray and this light green differentiate between them and I'm completely unable to do that so like they're all it comes in all shapes and sizes so really great work I'm happy that they put this out again and I continue to be incredibly impressed by the amount of stuff that they do every year that that is new for accessibility like it's not just there's also enhancements for CarPlay and VisionOS to bring those those platforms closer up to par with iOS and everything that it has but to be able to come up with these five big features along with again like at the bottom the press release there's another laundry list of smaller things that they've done too like it's very impressive to me that they're able to continue pushing it in this direction I think it's very very cool yeah it's awesome and I love that they give us a preview of essentially the next version of the OS before WWDC as a teaser in order to I mean sure there I'm sure there was somebody who made the argument a few years ago inside Apple that's like you know these are accessibility features we're only a few weeks away from WWDC we know what they're gonna be why would we not take advantage of it to get another I mean another news moment and talk about our accessibility story rather than having it be totally swamped by the conference and super smart and I'm glad that person won that argument this episode is brought to you in part by our friends at delete me privacy is important to me the information about me my contact information my personal information is something that I want to stay personal I want to stay private something that I care about I choose what I want to divulge online as we all should and I want to be able to choose the things that I want to be private and don't want the world to know about do you ever wonder how much of your personal data is out there on the internet for anybody to see it can be an uncomfortable thought especially when you consider having too much information online could lead to identity theft attempts fishing harassment unwanted spam calls but now you can protect your privacy and your information with 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around up Jason snow ha there's a bunch of stuff today in a variety of little containers we're gonna start by talking about some AI iOS 18 related rumors and news that's been going on last couple of weeks this is all from my comment in some form it's the sheriff the sheriff is back reporting that Apple will be using chips of its own making and design for powering their data centers for AI features in iOS 18 apparently the M2 Ultra will be the first chips used in these data centers Mark German expects that image and text generation along with lengthy summaries may need to be performed on these servers with more simple tasks being done on device he also references how this is kind of Apple's playbook for this kind of stuff where they have things on their own data sense at first and then they maybe spread them out a little bit so they have the one different cloud services I think I think they use like Azure and AWS for some iCloud stuff and he expects that that might be the future but I was quite surprised to see this that they will be one I guess having their own data centers because we're gonna get to some of the other stuff a bit on this this whole thing is getting a bit confusing and a bit muddled they actually asked him cook about it on the on the analyst call and I think it was Tim might have been a look at my history and they said the standard thing that Apple does will be done here which is they'll do processing of things on device and they will have some of their own cloud services and they will use other cloud services like it was I got the sense that it was a pretty straightforward sort of like they use their data centers for some things and then they use partners for other things and it's a mixture that will change over time and they they really pitched it as being kind of their standard procedure here that they that they do some of this I do wonder if you know they realize there was stuff that they weren't happy with doing on somebody else's server or whether there was a secrecy issue whether they felt like they were better off kind of trying this out on their own and then using other servers for for more volume down the road but it is it's really interesting right that they're trying to use their their chips as a as a way to differentiate I guess or or to power this in a way that they think maybe is better it's I don't you know we don't know what it is or how it works but it's a really interesting idea that that they might do it I also wondered if it might be fallback kind of thing where on some of their devices the power on the device is not strong enough and so that they might offload that to into their cloud that makes so much more sense to me you saying that I mean the reason I am confused is about is because of the next kind of two pieces of room around the app for you so the first part I'll say is Mark Gorman and Julie Love at Bloomberg are reporting that Apple is closing in on a deal with open AI to bring chat GPT features to iOS 18 and then also Mark Gorman is reported on some Siri improvements so Siri will feel more conversational they're going to have a thing called proactive intelligence which will summarize your notifications for you offer things like new synopsies and improvements to Siri suggestions across the operating system they also have AI photo editing and in this report Gorman says that Apple will not have a chat bot of their own is something they are technically not capable of with where they are right now with their own internal stuff and they have executives that aren't thrilled with the idea in general of Apple making one of these things which is why the open AI partnership could exist so this is what is puzzling to me of like well what do they need in the cloud then and where is chat GPT or Google Gemini if that deal happens to where is that coming in where is it not and you mentioning the idea there of like maybe what Apple provides cloud services wise is stuff they can do on device on new devices but can't do on device on old devices and that's what they take care of that's their stuff it's essentially what happens on the Apple watch with series nine versus series a right the idea that or or ultra two versus ultra one where it doesn't on device if it can and if it can't it doesn't and it uses the cloud and it just falls back to that that might be the case I also wonder the chatbot thing is so interesting right because it's very clear that a lot of people inside Apple are still have been and are still skeptical about the chat chatbot thing and then other people are like what are you talking about everybody in the industry is excited about this we can't sleep on it and so you end up in a situation where they're like well you know we'll do it but we're going to outsource it but what I wonder is what where does the cutoff because Siri needs to have a conversational thing and be able to attach to more data sources and be more right like Siri needs some of that and if you like I'm worried that what Siri is going to have is something that's more more rudimentary than we might want to expect that said I'm not sure I need Siri to do what chat GPT does right I'm not sure I really want Siri to go down too far down that path I just want Siri to remember my conversation understand the context be more conversational and be more functional and give me the information I want right like I mean that's asking a lot but like GPT has a chat GPT has this whole other set of things that you can throw at it so this is really interesting I don't know how you architect it so that there's just like a chatbot that eventually gets referenced I mean I don't know how is there a chatbot in spotlight like what Siri then right and what separates Siri to Siri say I couldn't find this so I asked chat GPT yeah it's very this is this is why it's confusing to me right it's like there's there's obviously lots of things they can do lots of things they may do but then there are all these like reports which are quite conflicting that it is becoming complicated to be able to follow what the story might end up being and so that is intriguing to me it is increasing my intrigue but I'm also getting a little bit nervous sure to because they've kind of I don't really think Apple has the opportunity to with this I they really need to impress people right I think I think though what we may be seeing is Apple rapidly responding to this and so things are not as locked in as clear yeah as they might be for a usual cycle and that that goes to who Mark Herman talks to where there may be you know some people don't know what other people are doing because there's they're trying a bunch of different stuff this also feels like maybe this summer's beta cycle is gonna be extra beta where they are also trying to figure out how to drop all this stuff in some of it sort of not last minute but more last minute than Apple generally does this and I also I would expect that some of this is going to be they are going to announce big in June and some of this stuff is going to be you know October and some of it's going to be December and some of it's going to be March but that they need to figure out and they may be figuring out along the way right like how let's change how this is integrated I just I to come back to saying bit more beta than usual I think a lot of this is going to be like let's put it in there and see what happens and then tweak it as we go but I would expect that Apple's AI story they're gonna they're gonna make a coherent presumably presentation about it but I would think over the next few years it's gonna kind of be all over the place where they're gonna be experimenting with things and and changing as they go and changing their data sources and changing how their data sources are used and you know I'm I'm okay with that I kind of expect that there what they're not going to do is unveil a finished product it's going to be a work in progress but I hope there's a vision for how this all gets split up and I really the thing that bothers me the most about the there will also be a chatbot window that that has chat GPT in it or Gemini or whatever is that's the thing I don't I'm not convinced that that is the most Apple approach to this it feels like like they're punting like they're basically like well we can't do that so we're just you want your chatbot here here's your chatbot you can have a chatbot if you want because what Apple's good at is integrating that stuff into the whole like experience and interface and having features and it's just to me that that Apple still philosophically believes that that AI is a tool to be used by features and not an end unto itself and they may be wrong about that right they might be wrong about that and so it's almost like it's almost like a hedge where they're like and there's a chatbot if you want it and they may learn the lesson that that that people do want that and I think by by so if it's a hedge I mean maybe that's a good thing because they will learn and and we've said this about a bunch of stuff that they've done recently like sometimes if you can force Apple to do it like with the like with the DMA right we're going to know if having alternative app stores and sideloading is devastating to Apple's business and the security of its users or not we're going to learn it now because it's happening and I feel like this is a little bit like that where chatbots are they not a thing that people actually want are they not a thing that works within Apple's interface maybe we'll find out and that will settle some of those arguments internally right some of those executives that german mentions who are like this is not a thing this is dumb we shouldn't do this like if their customers want it and they're using it their arguments fail and that would be interesting to see to because I know I want to be able to have a conversation with my phone and have it understand what's going on yes I don't want to talk to a chatbot but it's separated from the device right and that's the thing that gives me chills is is this saying oh and there's a chatbot somewhere is that setting us up for a Siri that's not that's still not very good right because the the chatbot thing the number one thing the chatbot teaches us is wow Siri is bad this is what I want right I want to have a conversation and so german says Siri will feel more conversational it's like okay but like but that's what the chatbot is for so that's what that's what I'm worried is that this is resetting expectations about what Siri is going to do to be like they slapped on a new code of paint and it's more conversational but in the end all it's really doing is a very limited number of on device model summary things and the things we think of as what chat GPT does Siri's still not going to be able to do and boy that would be frustrating so I have access to chat GPT 4.0 yeah me too model and I plan around with it I found it interesting it was like I think it's if it gets very impressive but I thought to myself I want to I want to see this play out in a different way so we're just we're on vacation we're Disneyland and one morning I said to a dinner I was like just talk to this thing just talk to it and so she's she's like you know hi how are you do do do do do have a little conversation and she's like can you give me some recommendations for places to eat rides to go on and like it was honestly incredible to just sit and watch this conversation unfold and I was like this is what Siri needs to be as a bare minimum for me of like you should be able to ask it questions and it give you answers where so much of the time like we just had this where like a couple of days later a dinner asked Siri a question like she's out loud asked the question and it said I found us on the web for you and that was it like that is terrible that is so right yeah that's that's that's what they need to address right and yes this is like for all of their oh we bet the company on AI now and we pulled all the engineers off the car project and killed and all that if Siri is still incapable like it's unacceptable it's unacceptable now maybe maybe the GPT is a fallback maybe it's going to get fed information from chat GPT or Gemini or whatever that is fine but well in the end I do not want Siri to be like well I've reached the end of my knowledge here is a page you can read on your phone right because that's the worst part about it is it's not well I found this thing on the internet that says this what do you think and then you answer and you continue the conversation that's a more chat bot kind of experience but when when Siri is just like yeah I can't do that you're gonna need to look at your phone now and look at this web page that I found that is the web page you already looked at because it isn't helpful and like that is that yeah so I just I'm with you I think a lot of this makes sense and I do fundamentally believe that AI is not always a means to an end and that the winners of using of leveraging AI technology have to make it friendly or like put an interface on it it's like the command line it's a it's powerful but like if you could do more with it and use the AI stuff behind the scenes to leverage it in other ways I think that that's really powerful and an opportunity for Apple but like you can't get the personal assistant wrong I mean you can't and Siri like man can you imagine if they do this and then Siri's just still bad and then there's also a chat bot but Siri is still kind of bad and broken or even they're separated from each other too you know we can put this on another phrase in a different way which is I think Apple's entire AI effort no matter what they do no matter how many new synopsies and AI photo editing features they throw into it if Siri is bad the rest of it doesn't matter if Siri's still bad if Siri is still terrible and there are chat bots out there that are continuing to get all the hype it will have it will be perceived and probably will actually be a failure like they got to get that right and the the german report is scary because it sort of suggests like maybe not and so we'll see I guess but I'm worried about it too because you know Siri was the first one of these kinds of things like this is what it was supposed to be yes right yeah and it was supposed to evolve which it never did never did it's better than it used to be but the world has passed it by it's never taken a leap bigger than the initial one right where like you it came around like wow this is amazing because nothing had done that before and we forgave a lot of it and it was great at doing what it could do but it's never since taken a jump it's like oh it's faster now it can understand you better show but the answers aren't any more rich really so I don't know how they I don't know how they square that and again mark german's challenges that he is just hearing from individual people throughout apple and they all have a different experience of this so it may be that these things are connected in ways that we don't understand but yeah I just I I got the same vibes which is in the end it starts with Siri the whole purpose of serious serious place in the interface is to do what people use chatbot AI chatbots to do that is why it's there you know and if if it can't do that or if the Siri team turns its nose up at the chatbots or there's a you know an executive somewhere who's just like no no no we can't let the crown jewels of Siri be tainted by GPT or something that's like no man like series busted it it needs it needs this technology and like that is so that's my fear it's almost like more like an organizational fear within apple is like okay apples agreed that they're gonna work with open AI and maybe google on chatbot stuff okay great but like what's that implementation like and does it feel like it's being kind of held at arms length and it's not actually improving like do the people who won the argument to put chatbots in iOS have the clout to say no no really put it in or are they gonna like sneak it in but people over and I don't know that the Siri team feels this way but just like theoretically the people behind Syria like okay you can put the chatbot in but it's not touching our stuff and our stuff is gonna be like this and it's not good enough like that's a disaster so that and that that's a level where if stuff like that happens it has to be high level executive right this is this is what Tim Cook gets paid for right the stuff like this this is what Craig Federighi gets paid for and and a cute like all the senior management team this is this is why they get paid the big bucks is at some point you do have to say these people win the argument and I know that you don't like it for reasons but they have to win the argument and my fear is that we're gonna see some hedging and not winning the argument here and I'm not saying throw Siri out but I think it's busted and needs to be a new Siri and if you've got a new Siri that's not as good as chat GPT but can leverage something like chat GPT great great so boy and and you know it's not gonna be there in the first developer beta right you know it's not gonna be there something something will be there but it won't be there so a lot of this is gonna hinge on like what does Apple say I sorry to keep coming back to my classic Jason position of pay attention to the storytelling but oh my god we are gonna have to pay close attention to the storytelling here because I suspect the storytelling will tell us more about what Apple's thinking about AI then maybe the initial betas will so moving on from this we have some iPhone news so a couple of things first the 16 line this year's iPhones dummy models of the 16 pro and 16 pro max society appearing online and if these are to be believed the iPhones are getting a little bit bigger the 16 pro will go from 6.1 to 6.3 inches and the 16 pro max will go from 6.7 to 6.9 inches so phones they're getting a little bigger and with this increase mink she quote is reporting that the 16 pro max may also benefit from new battery technology to give a bigger battery life boost to the 16 pro max oh nice I like that well that's Europe Europe a big phone boy mm-hmm you like yeah are you are you sort of like you know from axis fine or are you still in the camp of sort of like I will take as much green as you will throw at me I don't know if I want to get bigger haha interesting interesting I I feel like the pro max is at the limit that I want I don't think I want more fun I would need more reason for bigger fun than just bigger screen now now if it is like bigger battery and like great you know like other features like we were talking about them a couple of weeks ago like the other features that they might add and then I'll be like okay like you know and maybe this maybe you know remember we're talking about the fact that the 16 pro might get the tetraprism lens maybe they need you to make the phone a little bit bigger to make that work I don't know but I'm not sure I want the phone to get bigger and again it's just a small amount but in your pocket that's a bigger amount you know the way it feels so that was intriguing to me but maybe I'll only have to worry about it for one year because a report from Jeff Poo at the information details some of Apple's plans for the iPhone 17 line oh my god in 2026 the biggest piece of news here is that the plus phone is going away so they the fourth phone the line up has once again failed it's the curse of the of the iPhone mini so Apple is going in a completely new direction and working on something that that the information Jeff is calling the iPhone 17 slim the slim model would sit to be air it's going to be air Mike it's going to be air I thought air it's gonna be maybe let's go through this first and I'll say why that doesn't necessarily land with me all right so this slim model would sit between the pro and pro max in screen size now interestingly Jeff's article references the 15s screen sizes but then there's these new rumors of the 16 making it bigger so let's just say between for now okay it would be significantly thinner than any other iPhone model and would have a higher price tag than the pro max whoa that's why the air thing I'm not so sure about because it will be the most expensive iPhone right because it will be super slim which could be quite luxurious as an idea now interestingly this this gets weirder to me the 17 the 17 slim and the 17 pro will be made from aluminium of a design that is quote more complex whatever that means and the pro max will retain titanium and that phone will have a narrow dynamic island using a technology called metal lens and this new design in general so that this new design that all of these phones will have will feature rear cameras centered on the device move it in the glow this is a really weird report like there's so many weird things in this the slim iPhone middle size wise more expensive made from aluminium which is weird like that's weird to me I'm assuming the 16 pro will be titanium but I guess if they do have a new design you could maybe like re-talk about the materials again but then why does the pro max retain titanium maybe that phone is going to be different like I guess it's going to look different on the front so maybe it will have more than that I am on board with let's try the fourth phone again though like I think that that to me is a good idea because I agree they're clearly struggling to land that and I would say that smaller or bigger but not the nice one neither of those are compelling enough stories I think for for a large amount of people I think significant like a really thin beautiful iPhone maybe that would be a USP of its own right then it's really weird for it not to have the most features but it be more expensive it's just it's gonna be strange line up like that's for sure it just all comes to pass I like from a marketing standpoint like a marketplace standpoint I like the idea like we tried the small phone we tried the big phone in the low end set mm-hmm why don't we try an ultra ultra premium phone a luxury phone that's above the pros what why don't we go up there because I'm sure apple feels like there are some buyers for whom money is essentially no object and a beautiful iPhone that costs $2,000 but is super lux and amazing and thin and feels like the future is there are people who buy that right there are people who buy that maybe maybe that is more maybe being in that muddy middle as the fourth phone out of four that's kind of different but not really is a loser because the the pro has a clear selling point and the pro max has a clear selling point and the base model has a pretty clear selling point and then the the odd one out that's just differentiated by size seems to have not worked either time so go up scale and shoot for something that's even that's like I mean it feels like I really get iPhone 10 vibes from this as well yes I did what if we made the future phone and it was really expensive but we just made it and sold it for a lot of money well really expensive and beautiful right like beautiful make it we make almost a piece of jewelry and charge you a lot of money for it which is kind of what the iPhone 10 felt like at that time yeah iPhone 10 was like oh my god this is not like any other phone it cost what but it was so different and felt like the future and I could see them selling a an expensive iPhone model that felt like the future that was not a pro or a pro max it was a different thing it was a different size different thinness different weight maybe as some other different technology things on it I could I mean they've got all sorts of market research and stuff but just as a person on the outside hearing this idea I can see why this idea might be worth trying yeah because you might find many more available buyers up there I think that's been one of the apples lessons right is that apple has learned to reach people who have smaller budgets for phones with older models and with the SE and and they have had success with that but I mean I would assume the pro max has taught them that there are some people for whom the price doesn't matter and they just want the best biggest best iPhone I think for apple as a business it makes the most sense to have four distinct models two of them are very expensive like I just think that it makes sense to them I mean they may learn that there is a limit to that or the product might not tick the boxes but I I just I'm trying to imagine a buyer who does not care so much about the money but really wants a gorgeous amazing talked about phone and this is I mean honestly Mike when we talk about apples phone sales over time it's often this kind of phone that spurs sales around the world yeah not just China but China is one place where you could get a great advantage here but around the world if there's an appreciably different new looking iPhone and it costs there are a lot of people who just buy it because they don't care like a lot of people it's like you know okay it's it's two thousand dollars whatever like they don't care that what they want is that you know and for those of us who are cheap skates and I'm gonna you know the fact is apple has an audience that it contains a lot of people who just want the amazing coolest greatest looking apple product and so yeah I would if I was an apple I would try this for sure right because this this may be an untapped market it's that classic like whatever your most expensive product is there are some people in your audience who would have paid even more and are there enough of them for you to make a product for them and something like this sounds like exactly that and I hope we get forward to st names so like the pro max becomes ultra and then this gets his own name and then we have like the iPhone 17 that would be nice 17 pro the iPhone 17 will call it slim and the iPhone 17 ultra especially if they're differentiating the pro max with something like titanium and things like that like it really is a different phone yeah it's a different phone I mean it's been that way for a while anyway and it seems like they're going further in that direction and I just think as a someone who is interested in just talking about these things for distinct iPhones that fit for different markets feels more intriguing to me than we're gonna take the line split it in half kind of replicate the two and they're going to have different features like the the plus got lost I forget it exists most of the time and clearly the mini did not sell what they needed otherwise it still make it so I think this is a very interesting idea the other way to go would be you have a 17 again keep in mind we're talking about 2025 here 16 months away 17 pro 17 pro max and 17 ultra and the new phone is the ultra maybe maybe yeah I mean air I just think about the thinness and I sell it that but if it's expensive but and super lux ultra ultra to me feels like it needs to have all of the features right like all of them and it's not going to right so gonna be really intriguing to see if they do this and how they pull it off and the rest of this like a center camera and stuff like that I mean it's just weird I don't I don't know I don't know we know that they work in advance and then often these weird rumors from the summer before like the previous year do end up being right but and sometimes it's the details remember I'll remember iPhone math sometimes the details are not quite right yeah I don't think slim is the name I really miss the name but it's really interesting to think about and I think I mean look Apple spent the last what five six seven years super I mean really 10 years since they did the larger phone for the first time experimenting with the with iPhone sales dynamics it's their most important product it's more than half of their total company revenue and they've had some success in differentiating the product line but clearly there's this one model that has not they feel like they haven't cracked it so I think they're absolutely going to continue experimenting here and finding what the market wants and if they have the capability to make this I think that's the most interesting thing about this rumor honestly is it sounds like it comes out of a question of like we could make a phone that's appreciably different next generation phone that's thinner but it'll have some compromises and where does it fit and we don't really want and it'll be expensive to make and and then out of that emerges well why don't we just make that future phone and people will buy it because it's awesome even though it's super expensive that's an interesting idea so the experiments continue and finally my german is reporting that the max studio a mac pro will not receive an update until mid 2025 all of a max should be on the m4 generation by the end of 2024 based on some of his previous reports where he said that there was another chip that had not debuted yet in the m3 line it sounds like they were originally at some point planning to do an m3 studio and pro and then with the move to the m4 they've just decided not to do that and they're essentially skipping it seems like it's fine i'll keep waiting i'm going to keep waiting i am not buying a computer until the next max studio becomes available all right i have an m1 max max max studio right and i felt i thought about it like if i was given the opportunity to buy an m3 max max studio knowing what i know about the m4 would i i wouldn't yeah probably not yeah i would not i'll probably keep waiting i probably so it's probably all for the best because for me all i really want it for is just to simplify like and not be using a laptop not be using a thunderbolt dark anymore i want all my IO into one machine and then take additional power what i don't need this computer ready to have is more power like i'm using an m1 pro macbook pro so i can happily use this for another year and a half and actually i will be happier to do that because i'll get more use of this computer my m1 max mac mini is great it's great it's fine i can i can foresee a moment where i'm going to want a new one and i'm not really there yet and knowing that the m4 generation has begun this would not be the time that i would look to leap right because i'm like you know i don't really need that power right now and i know the new chip generation is very impressive because we've already started it so i think and i think there are a lot of buyers who would be like that where it's just like it's just fine let's just not even bother putting those products out and we'll wait until hopefully early next year but um for the and that's the next year the mac pro and the macbook air not until 2025 uh no the mark said all other max should be yeah but then then he says the mac except the macbook air he threw the macbook air in there i'm sorry i misread that thank you although i i find that weird and maybe it's a chip volume thing but like i don't know you're shipping an m4 ipad wouldn't you want to ship an m4 macbook air sooner rather than later but it may just be a sheer volume thing that they just can't have they won't have enough because they know how many macbook air sell and they won't have enough for that product and so they're going to wait until next year but um that yeah i find that a little surprising but that's that's where they are the the air in my opinion the air should be the first mac to get a new chip of a new generation but i also get that it's the best-selling one well remind me is this the basis of the iphone chip too like i forget how this works now the this so that the m4 isn't but the presumably there will be an iphone chip that will be on this process okay the new t smc process which will take volume right yes presumably there is volume that they are putting on the iphone because they need those chips and that won't be called an m it will be called an a but and it might have you know i assume it'll have the cpu cores and the gpu core is from the m4 i assume that that it will use a lot of the same work as the m4 but they they tend to call it something else because they make it for the phone so it's more power efficient etc etc but like it's going to be the same process presumably and so that factors in too right they got to make a lot of chips for the iphone for this phone a lot of them yeah maybe the iphones and the ipads are enough that you wouldn't want to have the macbook air at the same time like maybe it's a maybe it's too much i don't yeah i seriously think there's a spreadsheet somewhere because i'm sure look i'm sure they would make the macbook air the first m series a mac right if it could there's got to be a spreadsheet somewhere of tsmc capacity and reserved for the iphone and reserved for this m4 chip that they're putting in lower volume products like the ipad pro and probably some other low volume max as we get to the fall and they've got the they want to do the pro and max variants for the macbook pro and put them out there and you know you start to look at it and you think you know we just revved the macbook air it's fine like i literally still have my review units on my desk i haven't put them in the boxes yet to send them back to apple like they just came out so i can see somebody inside apple say you know it's fine and and the truth is those of us who are super wired into apple stuff know about the m4 and care about it but i think apple probably also knows that that the existence of the m4 ipad air probably not gonna hurt macbook air sales really not that much it's it's fine you know i would i saw this one of a headline today i just think it's hilarious from mac rumors apple's chief operating officer jeff williams has visited thai one to secure supply t smc's upcoming two nanami at chips economic daily news reports to visit apparently evolved and meet between williams and t smc's president to discuss custom ai chips and ensure that apple will be able to access the chip makers two nanami to manufacturing process set to begin in 2025 i saw someone i wish i remember who it was now it was even on threads or on mastodon saying has anybody from this team slept in the last five years unbelievable really unbelievable it just it just keeps going i mean that's that's what i have said this before but like one of the things that i'm impressed by about apple people especially on the non-marketing side on the technical side is they have to talk when a product launches they are talking about the past they probably have to be reminded of what they did right like when johnny sruggi appears and he's like hey new chip yay like that chip is old news that chip is a work he did three four years ago it's old stuff they're on to the next one right like we're all like whoa three nanami to process mmm it's like no no jeff williams is talking to t smc about their two nanami to process they're already thinking about the chip that they're going to use in 25 or 26 like they're they're on to the next one already that was ben macathy's joke who said i get the impression no one and i pushed it design team has taken a day off in about five years that was yeah that was the joke and i a whole lot leading to us that idea yeah so bring on the i mean and and for people who are like well i mean what happens after the the nanometer like runs out what we were are there no like there's only two left and then what all the answer is don't worry then we recalibrate the scale and we start talking about picometers hooray so get ready for that that'll be something uh yeah this episode is brought to you by our friends at uni pizza ovens uni is the world's number one pizza oven company like you make restaurant quality pizza in 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a text uh you and steven a slack message where i said you know what i think i'm ipad discourseed out i i we had a really good episode of mac break weekly last week um in studio me and mica along with leo and then andi remotely and i think we had we had new ipad pros there and i think we had a really good discussion i was very happy with the sort of points that i made on that and then i came back home and i was exhausted and uh and i said to you guys i think i've discourseed out about the ipad pro i think i'm done i think i have said every word and probably several more than that that i have to say about uh working on an ipad etc etc and i would like to you know go back into the into the bushes like home or Simpson so i i love hearing you want to take this from another angle it's beautiful because like i understand where this comes from and i have gone through my own journey you know like i was in the camp of you and Federico of really trying to do work on my ipad pro like use it as my laptop and i did for a long time but then a combination of workplace changes so when i got my studio and apple silicon kind of changed it and then i just moved back to the mac since then i've mostly focused my ipad usage on watching video playing games browsing the web like communication you like i message and slack but not like we're really getting into stuff not a ton of work really and reading comics and i've gotten by great in the past couple of years using an ipad mini but i have been basically since the beginning frustrated with the quality of the screen on the ipad mini and i was really interested in this ipad pro for my ipad needs because i think for all of those things video gaming web browsing like using it as my kind of like home computer which is just like mostly things for me not things for work and reading comics i thought that the ipad pro would do a great job and the the decrease in weight and thickness would maybe make it not so much of a thing going from the mini to the 11 inch so it is incredibly thin and light it's very funny to me that it's better than my ipad mini like it it i know this but also it's funny anyway like it's just like a weird thing i'm still getting used to the screen size it feels massive to me for an ipad because i have been so used to now using an ipad mini this the 11 inch ipad pro feels monstrously large it's it's very strange how you kind of like accustomed to that but the thing that i am happiest about is the screen this screen is incredible it's so good the OLED like i watched x-men 97 on my ipad right and like there's just a cartoon fantastic cartoon oh my god by the way oh my god could not recommend x-men 97 enough incredible uh but i press play and a trailer for the indiana jones movie started up and it was in like Dolby vision i couldn't believe it i couldn't believe it it was like i could not believe how good it looked i was blown away by it like because it's you know the OLED like i think one of the first scenes is like they're in like a it's like a dark street but there's like a neon sign oh my god it looked incredible uh and so yeah screens were all good like OLED in general is great and you mentioned this last time and i don't even hearing you say i don't think i was prepared for the idea of like everything about ipad os looks better with an OLED screen everything it's not just video every yeah like little panels come up and you're like whoa that's very bright yeah oh just like the color like the richness of the color feels better like just looking at my home screen just is so much nicer from the mini right like i i found it a little more subtle but i'm coming from the best ipad screen ever made which was a 12.9 with the mini led backlighting and the 2,500 different dimming zones but if you're not coming from that one then it's just that much more start massively different massively different um like yeah the mini screen is not good uh like it has the jelly scrolling issue where you kind of like sometimes scroll it looks like two halves of the screen is scrolling at a different refresh rate which is really weird so but you know i'm also i have pro motion again on an ipad where it's really noticeable on the ipad i feel like it works very well on that screen and i've had ipad pros before but it's been a long time for me right and so but yeah i skipped them my last ipad pro was the 2020 ipad pro so like i didn't get any of those like the mini led changes and that kind of stuff um i had forgotten how good face ID is for an ipad um but it's not better than touch ID in every scenario for me so when i'm using the ipad i much prefer it for like you know authenticate one password all that kind of stuff but unlocking an ipad pro isn't as nice in my opinion as unlocking the ipad mini was because if you have a keyboard attached you just tap a key and it unlocks for you but if you don't have a keyboard attached you pick it up wake the screen and then have to swipe it or whatever right right where like with the ipad mini i would unlock it by like i'd wake up the screen by by touching the same button that also would read my fingerprint and unlock the ipad when now i'm more like oh i pick it up i tap the screen to wake it and then i'm like oh no i swipe up it's like it's just it's not as smooth an experience where i remember with having the keyboard you're just like tap the spacebar and the ipad would unlock because i don't have a magic keyboard and i have no desire to get one like it could not be further away from what i want my ipad to do and like i don't want to add the weight and the bulk for a keyboard that i'm trying not to use really because i don't want to make this like a big work device for me um so i am using the uh magic folio the the denim color because it's the only color it has new magnet positions which is nice it's a little more fiddly but you basically have like a much more you have more adjustability in the angles so it can be fiddly to get there but i like it like i like that i can lean it back a little bit more or have it kind of standing up straight a little bit more i think that's it's cool that they added that so i like that they did that and it isn't just all about uh getting the keyboard and that's your only adjustability option like i think that's kind of cool um but yeah that i do really like face id though like having that back again on the ipad it's just nice i kind of forgotten how comfortable that is i have had a couple of times similar to you where um i'm holding i'm holding it in such a way that i'm covering the senses but they deal with it pretty well yeah i found that my uh my usual horizontal holding is up is upside down from where they put the camera so i have to retrain myself to hold it the other way mostly because i i prefer to have the back of the folio case hang down and attach and not have it be upside down where if it's not perfectly attached it falls over it's just a different feel and i preferred it but now i just have to train myself out of it because that the there's nothing worse than opening it up and being like i can't do your face i do you and i realize oh yeah it's all the way down at the bottom and my my shirt is covering it or whatever i'm like i gotta flip it back over um coming from the mini uh i am i cannot stop noticing how fast and smooth everything is i expect this is a combination of both the m4 and the pro and promotion but everything is moving faster better you know i am getting a sense of like this is a very powerful computer like i feel like i have that in my you know it's very i can feel the power in it um also having a pencil attached to the ipad again obviously i did not do that my ipad mini um because one the pencil is really big compared to the mini and two i wouldn't ever really feel myself wanting to use it on that screen because it was so small um but i'm very happy to have the apple pencil and ipad pro back for product design stuff um many times i borrowed my wife's ipad to sit and draw something out for like a new cortex brand notepad or something like i will draw it out because i just find that to be a nice experience and i'm happy to have something that's back to being mine again for that and the apple pencil pro is an incredible upgrade um the haptics feeling of fantastic the squeeze gesture to bring up the little palette is brilliant i'm really intrigued to see more apps like and what they're going to do with the haptics stuff um i i and it's nice to have that again i think if you use uh an apple pencil a lot like if you're an illustrator or an artist there is i think enough in here that you would want to upgrade for it um i i think it is a significantly better experience to be able to access tools like right where you are also this is the first time i've had hover apple pencil hover oh yeah that's really cool um like i i like when i've been using the like for me the majority of my usage um has always been interface stuff right that that was a big proponent of that it's really nice to have the little indicator wherever wherever i'm hovering over like if i was using the trackpad or whatever i like that a lot um so yeah i'm super happy with this ipad i feel very confident in saying if you have a 2018 or 2020 ipad pro this is the update you've been waiting for like you should upgrade to this one like if you use an ipad pro and you have like that first redesign model and you use it regularly i think if you move to this you will be very happy with the upgrade because i think this is a significant upgrade especially the screen i mean that's what an ipad is right it's the screen and this screen is bananas good like it's so good everything looks fantastic on it and if you watch stuff that is like you know Dolby vision like HDR incredible looking at pictures on this thing incredible videos incredible right because it's all the smart HDR stuff yeah it's this is a fantastic ipad i love it i love it i don't think i'm going to use my mini anymore i was wondering right like will i still use the mini i was worried about your mini right i was like is he going to be disappointed with the size of this thing because the mini yeah is is so wonderfully small but you lose all those features because you know for me i was still wondering like i was to use the mini to read comics because it's so small and nice to hold in bed but no no the screen is too good so i yeah i'm pretty sure the mini will be visiting a farm up state at some point soon because this thing is i love it like for everything i want to use my ipad for it is better all of those things significantly this is a really really good device and yet the thinness and lightness of it is fantastic like this thing is it's wild that they built a device that's like this it's a real flex and also they don't flex which is that's been the thing right there's been a lot of bend tests now and it's it's holding up so bravo apple i think this is a great ipad yeah i wanted to say again that about one of the things i've appreciated about the pencil is the haptics are really well done right that we we've talked about how i know i mentioned this last week we've talked about how the pencil is in some ways like the ultimate apple product because it feels like it doesn't have technology in it at all it's actually stuffed full of it and that video showed like flying through the barrel of the pencil all that but from the outside it it might as well be a piece of wood it is there's nothing there and the haptics are also tastefully done where you know they say the haptics up in the top of the barrel but you wouldn't know like the effect is incredibly solid and strong and then that squeeze gesture which i find just so much more natural than the double tap which is still there right you can still do double tap but the squeeze gesture i feel like is more purposeful i feel comfortable making the squeeze gesture in a way that i did not with the double tap i can kind of keep it in my hand and squeeze versus the double tap where i have to change my grip i think it's better and although anybody can write there uh to the API to handle the squeeze gesture how they want i i just want to say again how impressed i am with the undo that they built the radial undo because one of the challenges in ios for ages has been how do you do undo on a device that doesn't have a keyboard so you can't do command z and it's been like you can shake it or you can make a finger gesture but the undo with the squeeze gesture brings up a ring and you can trace backward and watch your drawing let's say go backward and then trace it back forward how do you do that so you you go you squeeze on anything that's doing pencil kit and there'll be an undo item and you select the undo item and then it turns into an undo ring and then you just move your pencil along the ring and it will step backward or forward it's basically an undo history like you'd see in photoshop or something and you can you can find the state of undo instead of going back back back back back forward forward back that one you just you just trace it and you have to like tap and hold on it a little right so you like select it you like just press on it and then you get um it's got a little haptic on each notch yeah that's sick that is really good so that was my that's that's my uh my sleeper pick i forgot like my favorite feature is whoever came up with the the radial pencil undo not only is it super smart i gotta say it should probably be system wide without the pencil i i would much rather be able to do like a a three finger tap or a double tap or a triple tap to bring up a ring that would let me just keep going forever uh wow what a feature yeah it's good stuff it's good stuff that's cool it comes up to the to the pencil people i know it doesn't it's like oh it's just the pencil and it's a little nicer and all that in the barrel roll people are going to experiment with a barrel roll to do different things like i i keep waiting i imagine ferrite will at some point let you barrel roll to like change it because all the audio settings are like knobs to like just change the balance by maybe even hovering over a control and then just turning the pencil right like uh yeah there's it's a uh it's not for everybody everybody's got their own use cases but wow for what it is and it's audience it was it's really perfectly implemented the whole the hardware and software of the pencil pro yeah i you know my wife is in an illustrator and we've been talking about this and i showed her new stuff and she was really she thought it was really cool and she watched the event and was really impressed by she's a pro create user and she was really impressed by what they were showing but that's not available yet like they they've updated it to support the new pencil but they've not given their like big update that's coming and so i think our plan is when it when it comes out she's gonna try it and we'll probably trade in our old iPad and get her a new one because for her the the um i think the thing that they showed about being able to select layers is like massively massively excellent oh yeah right to be the layer selection online like really really really would make a huge difference for anyone creating art the goal is and i know people don't understand this because when i talk about keyboard shortcuts like back with the media controls before there was a function around the magic keyboard people were like well just reach up and like i don't want to reach up my hands on the keyboard when my hands on the keyboard i want to keep it on the keyboard i mean keyboard mode the last thing i want to do is break out of keyboard mode go fiddle around like i just want to hit the key and then go back to what i'm doing right that's what i want with the pencil it's the exact same thing which is if you can build interfaces and gestures and things into the pencil so that there's more you can do while you're working with the pencil that doesn't require you to put down the pencil it's huge and so yeah selecting is a great example of that undoing is a great example of that being able to do that squeeze and then pick another item from a pallet and go somewhere else is a great way to keep you engaged in holding the pencil instead of having to set it down because i mean i run into that infarite every now and then where i have to do something like a and you could go through the interface with it too but like i don't know for me i end up going i'm just gonna set the pencil down because i'm tapping through the interface i don't unlike you i don't love tapping through the interface with the pencil i'd really rather just kind of like get to the thing really quickly and then be be back with my job but when you do that you've broken concentration i think when you go into the ui so to have it all be kind of triggered from the pencil it's just it unlocks i i think more creativity because you're not breaking stride you're able to continue your focus your hand is in you know it's on the pencil it's in the right place you're doing the right thing there so yeah two thumbs up from me nice like i understand the frustration that everybody has i also want i've had a rest to be better but for me ipadOS is doing a great job at what i want it to do right now and i'm happy with where this tool fits within my line of products that i use yeah for all of our conversations about this what i don't want to get lost is there are lots of amazing ipad use cases and everybody's got everybody's got their own but i i i don't have a lot of time for people who are like yeah the ipad it's irrelevant like if that's okay that's fine but just because it's irrelevant for you it doesn't mean it's irrelevant for other people that i i think like it i don't know if it's my most used apple device because i sit at my mac all day but like everywhere else i'm in the in in bed in the morning before i go to bed sitting on the couch watching tv like cooking in the kitchen like that's all ipad it's all ipad for me i have found so many places where it fits better in my life than a laptop or a phone and i'm very happy about it not everybody's like that that's fine but there are so many great use cases so it's great to hear you talk about yours there are lots of we there are lots of reasons to be critical about the way that apple has acted as a shepherd for ipadOS as as the developer of ipadOS and not taking it places that it perhaps should go given some of the hardware that they're building but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a remarkable product in a lot of ways and in fact one of the reasons people are motivated to criticize it is because they like it and they want it to be even better so anyway lots of great places where you can use an ipad i'm glad i really wasn't sure that you would convert from the ipad mini because the mini is so delightfully small but there's so many other things about these other ipads that are great yeah exactly i was i wanted to try and yes i mean what it has kind of reminded me is first and foremost i love new technology and yes has new technology like a lot of new technology in it and i am enamored with it really this episode is brought to you by wild grain wild grain is the first to ever bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads fresh pastas and artisanal pastries every item bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less no thawing required Jason it's around dinner time for me right now can you make me pretty hungry by talking about wild grain last night mike last night what do we do we were we're like okay what what what's dinner gonna be and we had a bunch of ideas and i said you know let's do there's an instant pot recipe that i like that's um for me sir what it's a Ethiopian lentils dish a little spicy it's really nice and they usually have it uh traditionally an Ethiopia with bread or with engera which is their bread and i thought you know we've got another wild grain bread in the freezer and so i made the measer measer what in the instant pot i turned on the oven i took the loaf of i think it was like a cheesy sourdough or something out of the freezer put it in the uh in the oven uh you know let it let it do its baking thing took it out let it do it's cooling thing sliced it up and we had this great lentil dish um and fresh bread i just sliced all the bread and put it on a plate and i just sat there with my bowl just dipping the bread in and eating the spicy lentil dish it's like lentils and ginger and garlic and onion and it's and then it it ends up being really smooth because it's it's pressure cooked into oblivion so it's just this very nice stew and then you just put it on the bread and you eat it so good it's so good but that fresh bread was the thing i said i don't want to make this unless i've got the fresh bread and even though it came from the freezer it it comes out you bake it and you bake it like you made it from dough but it's actually just in the freezer and it reaches that point where it is indistinguishable in my opinion from completely fresh baked from dough bread because i don't know when they're freezing it in the process i don't know how they do their magic so anyway that was amazing one of our other choices was pasta because they they also have frozen pasta that's fresh pasta like you uh not like the the dried stuff it's like the super soft wonderful fresh pasta that was another option for us last night i was really into the wild grain last night not knowing that it was a sponsor today so that's hilarious anyway we had a great dinner and at the end lauren said did we eat that whole loaf of bread and i said yes we did proudly because it's never as good as it is when it's fresh so how do you get fresh bread at home you know this was a great way we didn't have fresh bread in the house but we did because we had that wild grain in the freezer yeah you successfully did it you made me hungry and now you listen you can fully customize your wild grain box so you can get any combination of breads, passes and pastures that you like if you want a box or all bread or pasta or pastry you can have it plus for limited time you can get 30 dollars off your first box plus free croissants in every box when you go to wild grain dot com slash upgrade to start your subscription that is free croissants in every box and 30 dollars off your first box an incredible deal when you go to wild grain dot com slash upgrade that is w i l d g r a i n dot com slash upgrade or you can use the promo code upgrade at checkout or thanks to wild grain for the support of this show and relay FM it is time for some ask upgrade questions how did you feel about steven doing the lasers uh well i couldn't hear him when he did them but we put him back in later and uh they're fine they're fine it was good that he did them i thought that was fun i was i wondered if there was going to be a laser war or some kind maybe you were gonna follow oh yeah well i mean if i could have heard them myself but they were we had to change it in the edit because it was it was just like he's got something about his office setup where he's got the literally really aggressive um noise canceling where you can't hear his bell dinging we have this so good time you can't hear him going it's just a problem steven as stealth lasers dave asks when you take your ipad offer your magic keyboard do you put it in a case to carry it around there are times where i'm running around when i want the ipad but not the keyboard what do you do Jason i mostly have at all times a smart folio cover as well as a magic keyboard okay and i use the magic keyboard i found a lot of people expect that you keep the ipad in the magic keyboard all the time i don't i don't uh you tactically deploy it i i do i do you know i love a tactical deployment mic that is my we love it here i'm on the upgrade program we love a tactical deployment okay we do we do we love it i love it when things are deployed tactically oh yeah there's a deployment that happens and you're like you know what that's a tactical tactical if it's not tactical i don't want it no exactly right if it's not like a big highfalutin kind of like theoretical deployment i want it to be tied to a tactic anyway we love a tactical deployment uh and that's what i do so i keep my ipad most of the time in the in the uh smart folio most of the time though occasionally with this new one i've been taking it out of the smart folio every now and then and been like but as now so thin and light right but mostly it's in the smart folio if i'm gonna be using it in extended time i might take it off but mostly it just stays in the smart folio the keyboard it just hangs around until i need to write something or type something that's of length and then i will put it on but i don't because i want it to be lighter i mean that that's the thing when i say that the problem with the macbook is that you can't rip the screen off and go you know use it uh that's why is because most of the time i don't need the keyboard and so i don't want the weight and the beauty of it is it's just the keyboards around and i will i'm like oh i'm gonna write something on the ipad now and i will go find my keyboard and i'll snap it in and then i'll write my thing but i don't i don't have it hanging around all the time i'm in the in the smart folio cover which i'll just say again apple has decided in their great wisdom to only make they made one cover one color for the cover whereas uh when the old ipad pro came out for the longest time you only could get it in gray and then maybe i think gray and white uh they finally made like some beautiful colors i have an orange smart folio for my my m1 ipad pro that's beautiful they have denim as the only color option other than gray and white what i'll tell you is whatever you think denim is it ain't that like this isn't denim it's like a like denim it's like a navy blue i wouldn't even call it navy blue it's like it's a it's blue i don't know how to describe it but i wouldn't think of it as denim but yeah it's like a kind of new blue well you know jeans come in all sorts of blue jeans come in all sorts of colors including dark colors like this but i think like i think whatever you think of as like your standard levi's 501 blue jane or whatever which is canonically denim i suppose yeah it's not like that it's not that color at all it's a white darker yeah i i use i keep it was as i said earlier i don't i don't i don't have a smart keyboard i i do magic keyboard ever it's called i do kind of wish i could live the no case life for the ipad but like for me the case is very important to the functionality of the ipad like i want my ipad to stand yes like that is very important to me yes and i don't really i don't i don't screw a kickstands i'm not a kickstand guy no kickstands are bad thumbstand the kickstands so yes i i the the case is great and i use it in all sorts of ways to yeah to put it upright to have it be in sort of typing position there are lots of ways uh that that it works better i just wish that i wish that there were some color options they're not going to give me color options from my ipad i wish there were color options for the the the cases and i'm just disappointed that the denim is the best we manage this time after that because i want that orange again orange yellow or or a yellow or a or a you know something brighter would be really nice and they did there was like that brief moment where they're like yeah you could do a bright cover for an ipad pro and then they got then there was the crackdown right the colors are came back from vacation was like what are we doing here and then back and back and lockdown i have another uh similar question in the same thing from Neil who says i am a caseless ipad user as i appreciate this felt dimensions of a bad advice so i often wonder what the use case is for relatively bulky relatively bulky keyboard case versus using a good bluetooth keyboard are there many situations where the ipad of a separate keyboard is worse so couple things here one is bluetooth keyboard is great but where's the ipad is it in a it's got to be like using it like flat on a table or something that's bad ergonomics i realize now i did cut out part of this question which which is important where uh they said that they were they thought that the studio neat canopy looked interesting right it was like a device to carry a keyboard in and then to use as a stand for whenever you want sure so it's a combo you've got to have a stand and a bluetooth keyboard it's perfectly reasonable i have a i have a stand that i use when my ipad is on my um the bar of my kitchen i put it in i clip it in and it and it puts it up high and then i use a i use a bluetooth keyboard and it's really nice when i'm using it there but that's a whole setup where i've got a stand and all of that i've used i mean that that old studio neat um canopy was really nice as as a way of traveling with a keyboard separately and all that but the beauty of the magic keyboard is that it is just a laptop it's all in one the stand is there and it's the best experience because it's hovering over the keyboard it's adjustable it's all in one piece and if you're working on your lap which i do a lot like i i'm doing a lot of that on my lap in on the couch or out in a camp chair under the redwood tree in the summertime like that's in a scenario like that you got to have it all together you also get the trackpad right like the trackpad is a is a big deal for that product right when i'm working these days when i'm working on the um on the bar the bar top on sitting on a bar stool i will also have a trackpad that i bring out right and so it is nice to have it all in one yeah it is it is so there are there are scenarios where i i think it's perfectly reasonable to do this and travel with a keyboard i just decided and also you can save money because bluetooth keyboards are way cheaper than the magic keyboard you can absolutely save money doing it that way but ideally the magic keyboard is like a really good it's just a good fit if you need if you're willing to spend the money and and you want that kind of perfect fit and good portability it's it's worth it but i i absolutely use a mechanical keyboard and an ipad when i'm inside at you know at the bar but that's not right that that's only one use case where that makes sense and car asks given that the m4 chip has a dedicated controller for the OLED tandem display in the ipad pro what are the chances that an m4 based macbook pro rumored for this year and the m4 macbook cares for next year could have OLED displays related chances for an OLED display to pair with an m4 based mac desktop later this year or next do you think that the basically do you think the inclusion of the display controller for the OLED tandem display could indicate that we could see OLED displays in laptops yeah i think i think it could mean that the macbook pros are getting OLED displays not the macbook air prices don't make sense in fact i wonder if they do OLED for the macbook pros if they might actually segment them further and you know they all have that same really nice display now but i wonder if that low-end m3 14 inch macbook pro i wonder if the fifteen hundred dollar to two thousand dollar range just keeps that screen but they put an OLED in the higher end screens i wonder if that might be the way they would do it um not the macbook air i thought this question was going to be does this mean that maybe it'll dry the macbook air will drive two external displays with with the lid closed maybe and i think i mean maybe like like a new display controller that's souped up like that it makes me think that maybe there are some mac applications this is a more broad answer they're probably mac applications for doing that like the m4 is mostly not going in the ipad pro right it's mostly going to go in max max are gonna they're gonna be more max out there with it than ipad pros in the long run so there are probably mac reasons to have that display controller in there too and they're just not talking about it because they don't have a mac to talk about right now so i would think that there are going to be some things i also wonder if like could it mean that it it's got improved functionality for like the virtual display on the vision pro like i don't know what all it might enable but it does sure feel like they wouldn't have upgraded the display controller on the m4 just for the ipad pro it feels like there are probably other applications for whatever they might be do you know you might not know this but like the the tandem system is it showing like two copies of the same thing i think it is i think i think it's one is right behind the other and they're showing the same thing and that's how you get the increased brightness so like essentially if you were to like split it up right like if you were able to like pull them apart and do something with it you would have essentially two displays right they're they're both showing the same image but the pathway is is different it's not like you're actually using two displays this is i tried to get into this in detail with apple in new york and and there was a point beyond which they were just not willing to go they're like we could you could talk toward display people that we're not going to let you talk to um because i wanted to know more about this but my understanding is that since it's sending the same signal to both panels it's not like the device is drawing things twice right it's drawing at once and telling both panels to draw the same thing so it's not right you get it like it's it's it is more like driving one display but yeah if you pull them apart they're basically mirrored um the thing that they have to do and they did talk about this which is fascinating is every oled panel has a different um characteristic uh like not every dot on an oled panel is has the same max brightness which i did not know they're all a little different that's just a quirk of oled and so they have to be calibrated um and so they put the screens through calibration and you end up with like a calibration map of this pixel should only go this bright and this pixel should only go this bright and the reason you do that is you want them all to be uniform even though physically they're not uniform if you don't do that then continuous uh red or whatever ends up looking blotchy because they're all red but they're all not quite the same and so they have to do that and what they told me is they have to do that and they have to do it for two different monitors and they have to have both of those displays do those at you know high resolution at high frame refresh on the fly they have to modify every single pixel that is coming from the computer uh has to be modified based on the calibration and they said that is the kind of thing that you need to do down at the very lowest level which is why they have the display controller doing the job so that part is really interesting that they're not the panels aren't the same and even the individual pixels on the panels aren't the same so they have to do a lot of massaging there but what they don't have to do is sort of like try to draw the same thing twice they draw it once and it gets sent to both panels so in that in that way they are identical and they're right behind each other and and that's to get more brightness in there Quinn uh at snazzy labs did a really good youtube video that i think we might have referenced last week but like he talked about tandem oled and how it's not this it's not one of those things that apple makes up and says oh it's the you know the you know mega ultra display xdr pro those kind of words it's not that um it's existing technology that that has been talked about for quite a while and apple decided to actually implement in this way which is interesting if you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show for ask upgrade for snow talk whatever it is you can also send in you'll follow up at upgradefeedback.com you can check out jason's writing over at six colors.com and here he shows on neencomprol.com and here on relay fm you can listen to my shows here on relay fm2 and check out my work at cortex brand.com where online Jason is at j sno j s n e double l i am at i mic i am y k e you can watch video clips of the show on tiktok instagram and youtube where we are at upgrade relay thank you to our members who support us have upgrade plus and get longer ad free versions of each and every episode go to get upgrade plus dot com to find out more thank you to wild grain uni and delete me for their support of this show but most of all thank you for listening we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snow goodbye mike early
Myke returns to the show to give his personal iPad Pro review, and we discuss Apple's accessibility announcements, worrying Apple AI reports, and some mystifying rumors about future iPhones for this year and next.
