Apple's Podcast Subscription Service: A Mixed Bag for Creators

As Joe O'Connor, the host of a popular podcast, started his show, he made the conscious decision to bring all his audience to Apple Podcast and utilize their service. The convenience and ease of use were too good to pass up, and O'Connor was excited to take advantage of the features that Apple had to offer. However, as time went on, O'Connor began to feel a sense of unease. He realized that he was tied to Apple's service, and if he wanted to make any changes or transition to another platform, it would be difficult and costly.

"I mean, are you yeah, I mean obviously you can probably transition to the XML format and move your stuff over," O'Connor said. "But I just think it becomes a problem uh later on down the road for a lot of these creators coming in early and just choosing Apple so that that might be another risk." This sentiment is shared by many podcasters who have been using Apple's service for years. While it was convenient at first, the lack of flexibility and control has become a major concern.

The announcement of Apple's new podcast subscription service has also raised eyebrows among creators. The fact that they are taking 30% of podcast revenue as a fee is seen as a significant blow to independent podcasters. "I I was going to say I think I'm okay with this if only because they had to make a play in this space," O'Connor said. "They didn't close up Apple Podcast, they didn't introduce a monthly fee for some exclusive podcast plus thing that no one's probably going to ever listen to." While the move is seen as a necessary evil by Apple, it remains to be seen how it will affect the podcasting community.

One potential benefit of the new service is that it could encourage more listeners to pay for exclusive content. "The barrier to entry might encourage a lot more people to pay for exclusive content which would be good for podcast creators," O'Connor said. However, this benefit comes with a potential drawback. If Apple were ever to remove the podcast directory API from third-party apps, it would have a significant impact on the industry.

Fortunately, there is no indication that Apple plans to do so. "That's good," O'Connor said. "Well I know we went a little long this week but I wanted to cover all the stuff that happened at the springloaded event and the new Apple podcast subscription service for sure." The show's host also took the opportunity to give shoutouts to listeners from around the world, including Jeff from Switzerland, Stuart from Australia, and Matias from Argentina.

For listeners who are interested in staying up-to-date on the latest Apple news and trends, O'Connor recommended checking out the show's Twitter handles or sending an email with questions or suggestions. The host also invited podcasters to reach out if they would like to have a guest appear on the show. Additionally, those who want to support the show can sign up for a Patreon account at patreon.com/appppinsider.

Finally, O'Connor mentioned that his team is working on a new show called Homekit Insider, which will be released every Monday and cover topics related to smart home technology and Apple's HomeKit ecosystem. The show will also include exclusive content and interviews with industry experts. If you're interested in staying informed about the latest developments in the world of smart homes, Homekit Insider is definitely worth checking out.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by our friends at masterclass headspace and our new sponsor today Rogue amoeba very excited to have them on we'll talk about those in a moment but joining me on this fateful episode Wes hilard to talk about the iPad Pro what's up Wes Hey Stephen just excited to spend a bunch of money this week you are totally right so we're going to talk about all those things obviously the springloaded event happened earlier this week we did a recap episode and try to get it out as quick as possible I think I made it in about 70 minutes and you can listen to that for kind of just a fast rundown of everything the event announced and everything Apple released but today we're going to go in depth and Wes I want to go in reverse chronological order of the event because the iPad Pro is what you and I have talked about for many a weeks maybe even before we just touch on that you know a little meta discussion about the event itself this has been now maybe what the fifth or sixth virtual event you had dubdub last year you had the three fall events you know they've kind of got it down to a science a little bit they've kept it to an hour I think all these virtual events have been a pretty tight hour everything extremely well produced obviously but what did you just think about the event overall it was pretty fun uh I believe this is the fifth one and now we have two events with spy themes we got uh 007 right last time and this time we got mission impossible so you know what it's funny too I think when the airpods generation 2 were launched that came with a video of someone running spy like and tapping for the hey Siri so yeah there's definitely a spy theme going on well remember when that one poor person had to run all the way across Apple Park to give Tim Cook the clicker yes and you know speaking of Tim Cook he usually has his deal where he'll open the program and he'll close the program maybe do a little transition in the middle but this time Tim cook not only did he have kind of two big announcements at the beginning of the event and I'm talking about the Apple card and the Apple podcast thing which we'll get to in a little bit but then he also starred in this year's spy thing and I have to say I'll be honest I was not expecting Tim Cook's face Mission Impossible style like face mask off to uh the introduce the iPad Pro yeah that that was pretty funny and of course it's already been memed around the internet so I expect to see that Tim Cook face on everything now absolutely and so let's dive into one of the biggest announc going in reverse chronological order again there's chapters in the episode listeners if you want to jump to the product that you're most interested in you can look at the chapters in your podcast app of choice and jump around but we are going to talk about the iPad Pro first of all now of course I have to mention all the memes of earthwind and fire they could not stop the 2021 iPad Pro from coming out at least in the spring even though it is going to be actually available like miday you know maybe we'll say we were both right kind of came out right in the middle yeah I I just knew that there was no way they were going to do this in March if they had announced it at whatever March what 14th 24th event it it would have been right at a year and apple when was the last time Apple really did iPads one year one after the other and I'm not talking about the iPad 4 but like it's it's just very rare especially for iPad Pros to get updated on such a regular basis I was expecting it in the fall at the latest like I this wasn't going to be a 2022 product of course March just felt too early I expected WWDC just because that once we were out of March it felt like April was just never going to have an event so I'm I'm happy to see it now and uh that way we can get our money out of our pockets sooner get get our finances ready cuz WWDC who knows Apple could always throw out a little bit more Hardware yes we'll find out what was interesting is so many of the rumors and leaks were accurate in regards to not only the iMac and the other Air Tech we'll talk about but the iPad Pro it was rumored that the USBC connector would become Thunderbolt the mini LED display but just on the larger side and of course the chip upgrade we didn't know what it was going to be many people thought they'd stick with the a series chip and that was actually pretty surprising that they just said we're going to put the M1 chip the same chip that's in the MacBook Pro MacBook Air and Mac Mini now the new iMac that's actually what's going be to be powering the new iPad Pro so so it's the it's got the M1 and if you look at the details you can actually spec up a new iPad Pro to match the specs of any of the M1 Max that we've had previously it's the M1 chip you can now get it up to 2 terabytes the 1 in2 tbte models of the new iPad Pro come with 16 GB of RAM which I thought was interesting that Apple was actually surfacing the ram numbers now they haven't done that historically and that's exactly what you could get on the other M1 Max you can't get more than 16 gigs of RAM you can't get more than 2 TBT and so this iPad Pro if you spec it out Plus Cellular is actually the most powerful Apple silicon device arguably the most powerful in the lineup aside from certain configurations of the Mac Pro it's pretty amazing right so we can basically spec this thing very similarly to these MacBooks and weird is uh before people discussing oh well what's the difference between an iPad Pro and a Macbook and you know looking at the chipsets and architectures like it was really hard to compare because they were there one was Intel one was Apple's arm chip one had uh different gpus and all this stuff going on and now they are identical processors identical storage options uh this one has fast storage so who knows we might even have faster storage than what's in the MacBooks or maybe at least similar storage to what's in the MacBook Pro I guess we'll have to dig into the details for that but very comparable specs now looking at this iPad Pro the only difference really is it's a tablet which touchscreen apple pencil all that sure but the operating system iPad OS so and that was the big question you know people have been tweeting at both you and myself about now what is going to happen with the software and this is what I feel like the rest of the story has to be told at WWDC I tweeted before the weekend before the event the story would make sense if Apple said Final Cut Pro logic now on the iPad Pro which again you can get the same specs on this iPad Pro as the other M1 Max that run those pieces of software Final Cut and logic now they didn't mention anything software-wise basically in pretty much any of the products aside from the fine my things and the new camera features on the FaceTime camera which we'll talk about in a moment but I have to imagine that at WWDC we're going to see an iPad OS 15 hopefully with some different multitasking and utility options and some Pro apps now Apple actually straight up talked about Luma Fusion for video editing on the iPad Pro they showed off Lightroom adobe's Lightroom on the iPad Pro so they have no problem showing off Pro apps but I guess the question is will they bring their own first-party Pro apps to the iPad Pro what do you think I think it's obvious why why would we have 16 gigs of RAM otherwise especially now like we have the discussion has to arise again of xcode because out of all the things and all of the reasons to got here and spec up a Macbook what are you really doing it for I mean yes it'll help with video production and stuff but from what I hear most of the time the developers are the ones going out here and getting that big MacBook with 16 now 32 gigs of RAM and you know specking it up back when it was the a 16 gigs of RAM is a limitation for developers and they were complaining about it and whatnot but for an iPad from that perspective just having that uh development on the go or or to have the ability to test apps directly on the uh device that you're developing them for I think it makes a lot of sense to at least have way more RAM than maybe what the consumer's expecting because now you're developing the app producing it on the device Distributing it to other iPads which have much less Ram because most people even after this comes out are still going to have 8 gigs six gigs or sometimes four gigs of RAM on iPads so right in addition to the M1 chip 16 gigs of RAM the 2 terby of storage the connector is now a thunderbolt SL usb4 connector so that USBC Port is actually Thunderbolt meaning you could take advantage of fast data transfer speeds if you have a thunderbolt SSD or other hard drive and it also supports 6K displays which they actually mentioned specifically that the iPad Pro now supports the pro display xdr which is a pretty big deal a couple people tweeted at us and said in the presentation they used this one image showing someone editing video on the iPad Pro and then a large monitor in the background connected to the iPad Pro with like a preview window on that now you can read into it like maybe hopefully Apple will bring that separate display support port and iPad os5 you can do that already in some apps on the iPad keynote probably the one that most people would realize you can do a presentation on an iPad connected to a display and you get presenter display on the iPad and then the actual keynote on that secondary display but interesting that they would talk about Pro display xdr it supports it but as of right now you can't do Native dual screen support on the iPad Pro you think that's going to come Apple hasn't shied away from showing external monitor support on the IP ad before their presentations have uh shown people using iPads connected to monitors especially back when they first introduced the iPad Pro with USBC it's nothing new to see this and I I I don't know which application it was I wasn't paying that much attention to that portion but it could have been Luma Fusion or iMovie yeah I know uh a lot of these Pro apps have full screen external monitor support one I use every day is the Affinity photo and Affinity designer uh both of those pop your image that you're working on in full screen on the external monitor with the UI remaining on the iPad uh there's several apps that do this especially Pro apps and I think Apple wants to push that yes you can use an external monitor but again this is the USBC story if you remember the iPad Pros came out with USBC and everyone's like wow yes finally no more lightning no more dongles of that regard possibly new things but guess what iPad OS hadn't been updated so this magical New Port couldn't do anything there was no storage support there was no you couldn't connect a lot of peripherals and stuff yet but we got the full story at WWDC and I think this is again going to be the case iPad OS is due for a huge overhaul so in addition to that Port 5G cellular connectivity on the iPad Pro the slightly better cameras we still have the liar going to talk about the center stage feature in a moment but one of the big standout features and this is just on the 12.9 in display like the room suggested is the quote liquid Retina xdr Display end quote that's Apple's name for the display on the 12.9in iPad only but it is that mini LED technology that we have been talking about Apple stated 10,000 mini LEDs make up the display of the new iPad Pro 2500 local dimming zones basically this display is going to look great now we just need to actually see it and look at it and compare with other monitors to see how good it is but knowing Apple's record with display Technologies this is probably going to look amazing but again only on the 12.9 in okay so yeah the this screen is going to be pretty amazing because it has uh over 2500 local dimming zones and that's more than the pro display xdr and I mean this probably this isn't going to beat out the pro display on certain things I think color and stuff maybe will still be limited to a certain point but uh cuz it's P3 wide color right uh rather than whatever non since the pro display is using but it's still going to be an amazing screen and uh viewing content on it it's going to be wild but editing is going to be even more important like editing a photo with absolute color accuracy sure none of your friends are going to be seeing the photo in the same Brilliance as you once you publish it on Facebook but at least you know that by the time you hit publish that you have seen it in its purest form and you're putting it on the web you know without any uh weird artifacts or whatever and that's pretty exciting to me yeah yeah absolutely and you know it's interesting the best experience for watching something on an Apple device this 12.9in iPad Pro with something like I don't know airpods Max with spatial audio I mean the entertainment experience is going to be great really curious just to mention it here how that will compare to the new iMac which Apple has now stated has spatial audio they redid the entire speaker and microphone array on the new iMac I I don't know spatial audio coming from an iMac speakers sounded a little funny to me but we have to hear it to judge yeah cuz spatial audio has a lot to do with the tracking of like your your head right how you're turning your head so I think maybe that just has to more to do with the Dolby Atmos support because Apple seems to kind of switch the terminology there when they're describing movies and video with spatial audio with Dolby Atmos because Atmos again is right it's like you're sitting in a room full of speakers but you only have two speakers in front of you they're just simulating that right versus spatial audio is your the rather than having a bunch of stationary speakers the speakers are able to move around you as it plays the audio so right Apple seems to kind of I don't think they mean to fool people into thinking that it's better than it is but I it they're very similar Technologies so it's something we'll have to try out for sure yeah so the final feature I want to discuss they announced something called center stage and what Apple said is the frontf facing camera on the iPad Pro is now an ultrawide camera and it will smart zoom in out and pan when you're on something like a FaceTime call and the center stage technology will be available to third parties so hopefully apps like Zoom Google meet Skype apps like that can also take advantage of center stage and so if you move around in the frame or move out of the frame of your iPad Pro's FaceTime camera that it will recrop reso the image to include you and if even a second person enters the frame it will zoom out and try to keep you both in the frame during the call this sounds really interesting and I can't wait to look at it actually in action to see how quickly and how accurately it can perceive people I'm not sure that I've ever had this experience uh using FaceTime I don't know what it is with apple presentations but it's it's like you're watching a 4K movie through the FaceTime camera and I just never have that experience I know these selfie cameras and stuff are getting way better especially on the iPads but whenever I make a FaceTime call everything just looks like much and I know it's has I know it has to do with Wi-Fi connections but even when I've had gigabit Wi-Fi I I I think both parties have to have absolutely perfect connections probably even wired connections and you just can't move at all and maybe your image will look absolutely crystal clear perfect because these presentations always blow my mind like wow look at that that's crystal clear picture it's following them around it's really nice but I I will never achieve that I I don't have a lab to test this in to try it out so the new iPads they go on sale April 30th a week from now if you're listening to the show when it comes out and they're saying it'll be available the second half of May so no promise of Order April 30th and then you'll have it in hand May 7th they say the second half of May so curious how long that lead time is going to be we've heard about lots of supply chain shortages with chips and all that so again that's probably making that lead time unknowable to a certain extent so pricing for these new iPad Pros the 11 in starts at $7.99 the 12.9 in starts at $10.99 the 11 in seems to be the same price as last year the 12.9 is a $100 increase that xdr display most likely having to do with that so if you start there you get 8 gab on either of those models but if you spec this thing out let's say you're someone named Wes or Steven and you're going to pre-order this thing on April 30th and you get the 12.9 in display space square or silver no cost difference there you get two terabytes which to be clear the two terabytes is like a $1,100 markup so 128 GB on the 12.9 in 1099 the 1 tbte is $117.99 so that's a $700 jump and the two terabytes is an $1,100 jump when you get that much storage so if you get the 2 terabytes and maybe you want to add cellular which is now a $200 Edition that brings the 12.9 in iPad Pro cost to $23.99 not including Apple Care which is $150 more or any accessories this is not a cheap iPad Wes no and I mean you can pretty much you're going to shoot over $3,000 after taxes if you buy everything yeah cuz you get the uh the magic keyboard and we didn't mention the white magic keyboard I I don't recommend anyone buy that unless you're Johnny I have in a solid white room sterilized you know wash your hands seven times I did think about that like that's got to show dirt pretty bad because I think that's the first time we've seen an iPad Smart Keyboard or keyboard folio case in white and I mean that's got to show some dirt if you've ever used the regular magic keyboard they age okay but they do start to show their age after a period of time yeah and I'm sitting here looking at my magic keyboard for my iPad Pro and it's black and it's still the same I mean there's a little bit of wear on the keyboard after it's used or whatever but yeah it's it's not dirty looking and that's something I would be afraid of buying a white keyboard for sure but I I wanted to mention though yeah like if you buy everything if you buy the apple pencil the magic keyboard and max out this thing at 2 terabytes you're you're going over $3,000 and that's MacBook Pro 16inch territory right and right this is even crazy for me who who buys this thing every year and I mean I use it for work every single day I don't need two terabytes so thankfully the 16 gigs of Ram is coming with 1 tab so I'll be getting the 1 tab option if you can spe this thing to be more expensive than some MacBook Pro Models with their high-end models Apple really needs to sell us on the software right and um I've got a small Theory not to run to we have a whole event to talk about but just to say yeah the iPad OS how much has it really changed since it's first became iPad OS in uh in version 13 right not much it's the same home screen it's the same app switcher side it's been a few years and especially last year with the widget changes and stuff to iOS iPad OS barely got touched and I'm just sitting here spitballing that iPad OS 15 might just be a big Paradigm Shift uh we're not going to see Mac OS levels of like window resizing and stuff but I have a feeling that Apple really needs to sell this thing in the software story they know that they're smart people and if we go to WWDC and we have the same home screen with the same app switcher and it's it's going to look bad and are going to be like why did we just spend $3,000 on this thing you know you're not telling us the whole story here yeah I agree I think we're going to see some big changes at dubdub and I will join you I'm going to do the one terabyte thankfully I don't edit video on my iPad I do all my podcast work and audio files are still a reasonable size so I don't need to store a ton of stuff so I'll go with the one terabyte cellular I'm almost sold on I feel like if I'm going to keep this thing for a few years maybe I want that just in case I want to activate it at some point and saving $200 once you get to these kind of numbers it's like well just get it and it turns out some carriers are doing promotions uh Verizon gives you a $200 gift card for the Verizon gift card I don't know what you would use it for right AT&T is the worst one they give you $5 a month for 30 months I don't know why anyone would even care about that yeah and what's what's the other one T-Mobile they give you a $200 actual card that you can go and spend anywhere so if you're T-Mobile you might be a little bit lucky yeah when it comes to 5G coverage depending on your location you know T-Mobile 5G coverage can be pretty fast my experience with AT&T is like me you know you're not going to get Ultra wide band probably most places you use it so you know use discretion on that but April 30th pre-orders open you'll have to beat Wes and myself on pre-ordering this thing that morning we will be refreshing feverishly I believe at 88: a.m. pre-orders usually start so I'll let you know when I when my order goes through with yeah I'll be posting my delivery dates as soon as I have them for sure this episode is brought to you by loop back from Rogue amoeba listen guys I am so excited that Rogue amoeba has come on and sponsored this episode because I use rogba products every day and that is not an exaggeration and one of the coolest pieces of software they have for your Mac is called loop back listen if you do anything with audio on your Mac you're going to want to check out loop back let's say for instance you're on a zoom call and you would love to play audio from something on your Mac maybe it's a song from Apple music or maybe you want to play the audio from a YouTube video to get that into a zoom call where everyone else can hear it you would need a secondary device or try to hold something up to the microphone you don't need to do that lopac allows you to take the audio input or output from any app on your Mac and your Hardware devices and filter it through an output that can go to zoom or Skype or FaceTime or whatever you'd like maybe you want to add sound effects to your podcast as you record so the person you're recording with can hear them too loop back is how you do it maybe you want to include music in an event that you're live streaming loop back gives you the power to do just that with just a few clicks it's like a high-end mixing board right on your Mac loopback creates virtual audio devices that merge audio from multiple applications and input devices into a single source so for instance let's say you got a USB microphone or maybe it's just your airpods and you have the Apple music app you can tell loopb back take the audio from my microphone and whatever I play in apple music and make that a single input device then when you open Zoom or whatever other application you choose that audio input device that loac has created as a virtual audio device and then whatever music you play in apple music and whatever you say in your microphone it all goes to that app it is incredibly powerful fortunately it's also incredibly easy to use loopback has an intuitive wire-based setup it makes it easy and obvious to understand exactly how your virtual devices work you can see where audio is coming from and where it's going to figure adjust experiment all just by clicking and dragging whether you're a podcaster a live performer or maybe a streamer loop back can help you and you can also use loop back with other rogia software like audio hijack which I use literally all the time to supercharge your recordings and all the audio stuff on your Mac guys I cannot recommend highly enough rogba loop back and while you're there check out audio hijack as well you can get a free trial today by going to Mac audio.com / insider2 Mac audio.com insider2 and you can download the free trial of loopback and then when you're ready to buy because after 30 seconds you will be listeners can save 21% off loopback with the coupon code Insider 21 all one word so download the free trial Mac audio.com inssider 221 and use the coupon code Insider 21 to get 21% off loop back software our thanks to rogba for making incredible audio software and for sponsoring this episode all right well right before the iPad Pro during the event Apple announced the new iMac it was long rumored John prer was the first one out there with the different color rumor saying that Apple's going to offer the new iMac in multiple colors and he was correct on that and as we'll talk about in a moment too the man predicted air tag he had the leak and he did it and he was correct but with the new iMac this is now also powered by the M1 a lot of people thought maybe we would see the next version of Apple silicon chips maybe the m1x or M2 but that's not the case the new iMac is powered by the same M1 processor that all the other Apple silicon Macs are this one is a 4 1/2k monitor so 4.5k and the screen size has increased from the previous 21 1/2 in to 24 in only one size screen right now which does ask the question will we see a larger iMac with a more power ful processor maybe they call it an iMac Pro maybe not but will we see a larger size that is more powerful than what we have here we're going to see like a 30in maybe 32 in um iMac in the future with the m1x M2 whatever it's going to be processor this iMac uh I think is just a Prelude to what Apple's going to do do next now maybe that bigger one won't have as many colors it'll just come in space gray and silver as usual at the very least seeing these colorful guys out there just gives us a little bit of Hope for what's coming down the line cuz the rumor right now is is uh we're basically going to see a pro display xdr esque iMac Pro running a very powerful Apple silicon chip and that's very exciting that is cool so the new iMac does come in seven different colors but not all colors are available at all price points so again it's got the M1 chip depending on the configuration you get the 8 core CPU and 7 core or 8 core GPU much like the MacBook Air you can side there we don't have all the configuration options yet I imagine you'll be able to get 16 gigs of RAM maybe up to 2 terab of storage but the colors the ports and touch ID which has now come to the magic keyboard a wireless touch ID for the first time those things are dependent on what configuration you start with so the base model the new iMac is $12.99 $1,299 and you get the seven core GPU but only two Thunderbolt USB 4 ports no magic keyboard with Touch ID and no gigabit Ethernet which is built into the power break which we'll talk about in a second and you only get four color options at that lower price point you get blue green pink and silver or you know the light non-color color and you have to jump up to the $1,500 model if you want the additional three color options which are yellow orange and purple and then on that model and higher you get two addition usb3 ports so that has a total of four USBC style ports two Thunderbolts two USB and you get touch ID wirelessly on the magic keyboard and the gigabit Ethernet port on the power break the ports ethernet and touch ID for the price difference I totally get that but to only have certain colors on the more expensive options seems a little strange to me yeah this is probably a supply chain play or whatever boring story but I'm I'm just going to imagine that there's this last dredge of Johnny I uh worshippers that hiding with an apple demanding that they only make Yi Max and they had to finally just make a deal saying no only these colors at higher price bottles make them pay for that color whatever the case may be it's kind it is kind of funny that Apple's saying no if you want a purple iMac you're spending some real real money yeah now all the accessories magic keyboard and the magic mouse or magic Trackpad come color matched to the color of your iMac which is pretty cool so if you get a yellow iMac you get yellow accessories as well if you go with the cheaper model iMac you can pay a little more for the magic keyboard with Touch ID or one with the numeric PAD as well so that's interesting these keyboards mice and trackpads you're basically getting this white keyboard with a little hint of color hidden between the keys or on the sides or the mouse and trackpad being bright white and that's it that are are we no longer getting the space gray options maybe in the future we'll get Pro Models but also Apple why no backlighting are you that afraid of you know losing a few days off of your battery life that we don't actually get any back lighting it's it's crazy to me that they've updated these keyboards and still withheld that feature that is strange and they also updated the Magic Mouse but still kep the charging port on the bottom which you know we're just used to it by now but it seems like if you're going to redesign all this stuff maybe take another pass at the Magic Mouse to allow it to charge and be used at the same time now the gigabit Ethernet port this is very interesting the power brick for the new iMac is actually a box that has a braided cable color matched to the iMac that magnetically attaches to the iMac for power and then another cable from the power brick goes to the wall for electricity but on that power brick is actually an ethernet port and that is where the iMac gets the ethernet connection is on that power brick which is super interesting we've not seen something like this aside from USBC hubs and all that but for Apple to do a first-party thing like that Neil use apple Insider was actually wondering would they add more ports to that kind of power brick maybe with more Pro machines maybe an SD card I feel like maybe not because that power brick is going to be on the floor or behind a desk and so it's probably only things that you would want to leave connected permanently like ethernet and power so that's interesting and it's also interesting to me that we need a magnetic power connector at the back of the iMac as if apple is assuming people are moving these around a lot and wants a quick release or quick connect power cable with magnets I I thought that was interesting yeah they've heard from the ATP guys who uh frequently carry IMAX to the beach in a suitcase oh that's right that's right I forgot about that this this is cool I it I mean what would you call this a MAG safe connector technically yeah basically we could see more mag safe show up in future Maxs I've seen people talking about that that's that's really exciting but I think it's just funny that Apple's invented the dongle and everyone's losing their minds it's like it's it's just it's another it's another dongle with a ethernet port in it I've seen some jokes online uh people are saying that the little uh place where the ethernet plugs in is actually just uh e uh Airport Express that they've connected to power they've just got a bunch laying around so might as well use them for the new IMAX exactly I think it's a cool idea maybe there could be some more things implemented into this little um kind of Hub dock thing I I wouldn't bet on it Apple just going to make it real nice and simple ethernet in done yeah now the headphone jack has moved to the side which kind of makes sense it was always kind of weird to reach behind the iMac to try and plug in a pair of headphones also a word on that touch ID magic keyboard it will not work with an iPad in case you were wondering some people were thinking you know you can use magic keyboards and pair them with an iPad just use the keyboard but you can't in fact use the touch ID on the new magic keyboard to unlock your iPad so just word of warning on that and then just also a little piece of news that came out after the event is that Apple Care Plus you'll be able to extend Apple Care Plus for Max indefinitely without having to go to that month-to-month option if you want to purchase Apple Care Plus extension packages once your current coverage expires you'll be able to do that going forward obviously including these new iMacs but here's here's my question for you Wes I saw this iMac everybody was very excited and I think I got a little spoiled at the renders that we had seen passed around by people like John prer where the render showed the iMac without a chin and so once they started the new iMac announcement and I almost assumed it would not have a chin and now seeing what the iMac looks like in quote unquote real life or at least in these renders I don't know if I'm crazy about how this thing looks from the front you know from the side obviously it's super thin looks great from the back it's super clean there's less ports so you know it's a nice clean look magnetic charging ports cool but as far as from the front the side that you like sit in front of all day I'm not sure if I am crazy about this design there's a few designs decisions here that it's a little weird I believe all of the displays have white bezels around the screen yes and then underneath is the colored chin which is a slightly different color than the rest of the body right I'm not sure what Apple's doing here at these do dual tone thing it's it's cool I guess but again if you're going to spend most of your time staring at the screen I feel like the area around the screen is the most important and the it feels a little bit I don't know like they just kind of gave up halfway and said oh the backs of these are beautiful but who cares about screen I actually had to keep looking at different pictures because I would see the pictures from the back and I was like okay those are pretty dark Rich colors then I would see the front and be like that's kind of more of a pale pastel color and I almost had to see like what a color is this actual thing but it is in fact that the sides and back are the darker Rich color and the front is that pastel lighter shade of the color and we got pink and orange why why skip over Red Apple come on I would have bought a red iMac instantly even as an iPad User just to have it in my room it's fine yeah I I thought it was funny to mention uh MKBHD said there's a reason why the headphone jacks on the side of the iMac it isn't even for usability purposes the iMac is now 11.5 mm thick and the headphone jack needs 14 mm in order to fit so they had to put it in the side they couldn't go anywhere else that's interesting and you know I think MKBHD actually tweeted out at the announcement that he's not crazy about the design either he says they're ugly yeah I I like again I like looking at the whole the whole product but when you're just looking at the display part it's it is strange I'm not a fan of the chin but I know why they did it obviously it's to that's where the whole computer is everything else is just speaker it's just they could have made it a tad bit thicker and through the CPU behind the speakers or in front of it or whatever and and been done but uh I guess they just really wanted to achieve the thinnest possible display yeah I guess the one picture of the guy with the yellow one sitting at the desk that's the coolest looking one but he also has like his entire Ambiance kind kind of matches that yellow so you I'm curious if you stick this in an office or even in a workplace if you choose a color that kind of doesn't match with everything else around it I guess it's not a huge deal but I don't know you almost have to be cognizant of that now I like I I really like the shade of green that they chose it's almost blue um which is nice yeah I I would struggle to choose one of these but luckily I don't have to um I'm probably going to if I ever do buy an iMac in the future it's going to be whatever fancy one comes out uh after this and it's probably going to be in space gray so exactly so the new iMac you'll be able to pre-order it April 30th again they're saying second half of May this thing will be available so unknown when it will ship but it starts at $12.99 pre-orders April 30th this episode is brought to you by headspace listen you've probably heard the word meditation before and maybe you even tried to do it but it didn't work for you maybe you felt like you were doing it wrong but if mental health is part of your self-care plan this year you owe it to yourself to try headspace head space is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easyto use app and is a beautiful app might I add headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research whatever the situation headspace really can help you feel better do you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation just for you do you need some help falling asleep headspace has wind down sessions their members swear by and for parents head space even has morning meditations you can do with your kids head space's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress improve sleep boost focus and increase your overall sense of well-being I'll be honest when I'm really working and I have a lot of stuff on my task list I can feel stressed pretty often and when I use headspace especially when I do it regularly every day or every day that I'm working it really helps my focus and peace of mind I also tried a new thing where I did some headspace sessions with my kids they have those specially made courses for kids either on Focus or attention or maybe it's actually anxiety that they're dealing with doing those mindfulness exercises with headspace with my kids actually helped me feel closer to them and it really helped their stress level too and if you haven't 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wish they would have used like maybe the latest chip in the Apple TV since it's only updated every few years but it's okay we got the h12 bionic it is now capable of doing HDR at high frame rates and they've updated the AirPlay spec so if you capture HDR video on your iPhone 12 that Dolby Vision HDR that if you airPlay it to this new Apple TV 4K it will play at 4K 60 frames per second just via AirPlay so that's all well and good we actually did get thread built into the Apple TV box so that's nice but the big story here the new redesigned Siri remote so the flat black touch surface based Siri is no more and now we have a brand new Siri remote with more buttons actually has a five-way clickable directional pad that you can push down and click but you can also swipe across which is pretty cool and even a jog wheel reminiscent of the old iPod jog wheel if you want to scrub through a TV show very cool plus dedicated power buttons and mute buttons to work the your TV in addition to the Apple TV box and the Siri button has moved to the side so honestly it's not a super aesthetically pleasing remote but it doesn't matter because it will probably function really well and that's what matters yeah if you've seen me cynically replying to some people on Twitter uh a lot of people were expecting Apple to bring out a soundbar Apple TV and all of our wildest dreams accomplished PlayStation 5 graphics and stuff and I mean this whole time I've just been leaning on it's going to be the same box with a new chip hopefully a U1 which we didn't get I was hoping for a new new chip like you said but we got the a12 which is 2 years old so we've got 2019 Apple TV and that's fine I guess but are we going to be getting the A14 in 2024 it's it's just a very strange product line to me and I I don't see either this means one of two things to me either Apple doesn't really care because they have the Apple TV app everywhere and this really is just an apple arcade kind of like simple game machine or B they have something much bigger coming in the fall or maybe next year yeah it's possible you know it's also interesting because they add little Innovative features like this color balancing tool which you'll be able to use your iPhone hold it up to the Apple TV screen and the Apple TV will calibrate itself to have the best color possible for your specific TV so cool feature pretty interesting that feature is available on the current Apple TV 4K as well via the new update right very true you have you need iOS 14.5 I I just also like it's it's the a12 and the new new the new Siri remote which is also compatible with the old Apple TV so all we really got a12 processor that's it cuz all the new software features other than high frame rate HDR honestly I hadn't even realized the HDR wasn't at a full 60 frames per second I guess it was at 30 before yeah but yeah that's that's it that's the only new thing and I mean that's fine again this there could be a software story at WWDC I doubt it because Apple TV never has a software story it's it's just a little disappointing the Seri remote's fine it's a little bit utilitarian for my taste I I like that they kept the touch things with the buttons that's great but overall it's just not the product that we wanted I think yeah you can buy the remote also any Apple TV that runs tvos is compatible with this new Siri remote and you can buy it separately for $59 which is actually cheaper than the old Siri remote I think the old one was $79 as you can get this remote separately it works with older Apple TVs unfortunately there's no U1 chip and again as we're about to talk about air tag it's interesting that they didn't put the U1 chip where you could find this remote easily with your iPhone while they just announc the air tag U1 Precision finding and all that was really hoping that the Siri remote would have that too so this this has been going around everyone's been very upset I'm not entirely sure that that means that there's just absolutely no finding capabilities I I mean it it might cuz Apple doesn't really sneak in things like that but um it's Bluetooth LE air tags also use Bluetooth LE if the remote has access to that we there's a chance that you could ask Siri on your phone to find the remote and it might be able to give you a direction I don't know how well directional things are with Bluetooth maybe it's completely unable to give you the direction the signal is coming from I have no idea but technically speaking I think maybe there's something there that can be used but yeah absolutely disappointing that there's no U1 chip again probably just due to this whole chip shortage thing anyway right so the Apple TV like the iMac and iPad Pro you can order it April 30th they say again available second half of May 32 GB model for $180 and a 64 gigb model for $200 you know pricing wise I really wish Apple would have done something to hit that under $100 price point for people to get into the Apple TV face but that's the price it's it's weird again cuz we didn't get price drops for the other products I believe they're just going to kill the previous Apple TV like they've done with other products slowly phase it out let other retailers discount it as need be but yeah the $200 price point cuz I'm going to buy the more expensive one cuz I Do download a lot of Apple arcade games that's really the only reason why you need that storage um 32 is just untenable I feel like you can get two games on the Apple TV at 32 gigs and you're done I can say from experience I've actually had to jump into the manage storage setting option on my Apple TV 4K cuz I got the 32 GB even for the one that my kids use apple arcade on and you do have to manage that storage once you get into like multiple games and it's not great I mean I would pay $200 for a 128 gig Apple TV that would have been nice but again this product feels very much tack on at the end of a a thing that don't it's not really a passion project get it out there get people to buy it if they buy it and move on like hopefully we'll see whatever if if ever a passion project from Apple TV but hard to say at this point after a few years of same same right all right and then we come to air tag we finally have the official announcement it is the name that had been leaked John proster with the original render from a long time ago rumored for so long air tag was officially announced it is exactly what we thought a location tracker lots of accessories it uses the U1 chip and Bluetooth LE you can attach it to Key rings and put it in bags or whatever it uses the find my app and system interestingly it actually has a user replaceable battery which was kind of startling for one for Apple to announce a product with a user replaceable battery I don't know the last time that has happened except for the magic mice and keyboards back when the daa battery was what it used but user replaceable like 2032 style battery that you can get at whatever store battery life should last about a year which is pretty cool and the feature of precision finding using that U1 chip you can basically look at your phone and a big arrow on your phone screen will point you in the direction of whatever air tag you're looking for is pretty cool I know I'm going to be picking up a number of these okay Stephen so I got to correct you here this is a completely different product from what was rumored the rumor was for air tags this is air tag completely different oh that's right that's right I've been trying to say air tag singular but it I don't know it just doesn't it draws me crazy I I remember the last time this happened was iPhone 10 versus iPhone x everyone with the the X leaked way ahead of time so we were all used to saying iPhone x and then Tim Cook walks out and says iPhone 10 and everyone's like what are you s anyway these are cool I remember uh Once Upon a Time people assume this would recharge maybe via an Apple Watch charger which was just very odd to even conceptualize uh how often would you need to recharge it the the small uh batteries thing that's fine that's great I think it is weird that Apple being the company they are give us replaceable batteries but what else are you going to do this you know standing on a mountain saying that we're this green Company by 2030 it's going to be you know reversing carbon emissions and stuff but also we sell you this thing that you have to give back to us after a year because it's worthless and yeah I don't I don't think that would would fly for a lot of people they've done that a few times with other products kind of a little edging that line and people have blown up about it so I'm glad they made the right decision here yeah I mean they could have done like what tile and other companies have done where you basically have to like mail in your tile again and get a new one at a discount but has anyone ever done that have you ever no they die and you you lose them in a closet somewhere and that's it yeah so I'm I'm very glad for this there's a there's a ton of accessories for it Apple has some first party accessories like keychains and Loops Hermes has like let's be honest ridiculous hundreds of dollar leather accessories for air tags they look really cool way too expensive they look cool way too expensive but the air tags themselves sorry but air tag itself is priced priced really nicely at $29 per air tag or you can get a pack of four for $99 which again looking at other competitors like tile who actually made a stink and wants to bring up some antitrust argument because of this location tracker uh pretty good pricing for that compared to other location trackers again I'll be picking up a number of them there water resistant again a year of battery life you can customize it with emoji and text and different things like that if your air tag gets misplaced and maybe someone else has it or some how you have an air tag in your possession accidentally someone dropped it in your bag or whatever it will actually start pinging or beeping after 3 days to let you know that you have an air tag that's not yours in your immediate vicinity so after 3 days it'll start making a noise saying hey this isn't your air tag and that's part of Apple's privacy initiative with this kind of location tracker I thought that was pretty interesting yeah these are really clever devices I mean already Samsung's announced that they're mimicking some of these features for their new tracking tags or whatever I I like the idea of them I'm going to buy a four pack I'm going to slap some emoji on these things and see what I can do with them I want to glue it to the back of my cat and so I can you know use fine my to find my cat hiding in my closet and stuff just for fun but maybe around its neck what do I mean what do you put a you put a collar on a cat right is that a thing you do yeah uh my cat has a a collar with a bell on it right now so it doesn't sneak up on me speaking of accessories for these things if you go on Amazon right now and search Air tag it'll try to auto Correct you so tell it not to but but there are already dozens of air tag products that you can buy from $5 to $40 most of them mimic Apple's designed I think like companies like uh what's the word spyin spyin those guys already have like an official air tag accessory I ordered that one cuz it looks nice for $17 plenty of stuff out there I'm waiting cuz it's going to happen pet collar companies and stuff like that are going to make air tag compatible collars and you just slip the tag in there and if you lose your dog well now you can find them uh with Apple's right chip I I think there's going to be a lot of uses here that people just haven't thought of or conceptualized yet just cuz no one's going to stick a tile on an animal just because the their tracking systems a little different and has a much smaller base whereas this is everyone with an iPhone will now be able to Ping that chip and even if you have an Android phone you can tap it and get information now my question is is how do you educate people because yeah sure everyone on the planet has either iPhone or Android but if you pick up this air tag how are they going to know that they can tap their phone to it and find a phone number it's it's just another one of those things that Apple has to figure out a good way to get the word out there maybe there'll be a big social thing maybe not but it it is an interesting product overall I'm I'm excited to just play around with it for sure now these you can actually pre-order right now as you listen to this podcast pre-orders opened at 8: a.m. eastern April 23rd Friday and they will be available next Friday April 30th so of all the products announced at the spring loaded event this one is available now I wanted to put this image in our notes because it's hilarious uh when I was spelunking when I was spelunking uh Amazon for air tags one of the air tag products had this image embedded in it I have no idea why we'll have to include it somewhere I don't know but um just so it's a it's a regular orange band that goes around the air tag fine that's that's fine but then in the background it's a woman holding a cell phone looking side eying this child this so strange it's such a strange advertisement it says remote listening follow anytime what does that mean it's not for the air tag it's it's such a Anyway Amazon is such an odd Marketplace super weird oh yes I I'll include that in the show notes you can enjoy that this episode is brought to you by masterclass with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn scientific thinking and communication from Neil degrass Tyson The Art of Storytelling from Neil gaimon learn cooking from Gordon Ramsey and even directing from James Cameron with over 100 classes from a range of world class instructors the thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think I love taking masterclass courses and I've done several of them one of my favorites is music scoring and composition for film with Han Zimmer Han Zimmer has done so many of the scores you've probably heard in some of the biggest blockbuster movies and what I love is you can see inside his Studio you see the equipment he's using he's talking about storytelling and how themes and music can relate to specific characters in the movie it's just awesome to learn things like that from the people who are doing it in the business the cinematography and video quality is incredible they just look and sound great and lessons are only about 10 to 15 minutes you could do a lesson on your lunch break or maybe you started watching One on your phone and one of my favorite features is you can flip it into Audio Only mode and then listen to it like it's a podcast sitting in your car you can also watch on any device you choose you can watch on your iPhone your iPad your Mac you can use the web browser or their app on Apple TV and in addition to the video lessons masterclass provides you with downloadable lesson Recaps and supplemental materials so you can keep learning even when you're done with the course some of the best use cases for that are the cooking classes where you can get downloadable guides that are basically a high-end cookbook that you download from masterclass I highly recommend you check it out get unlimited access to every master class and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off an annual membership go to masterclass.com slapple inssider that's masterclass.com slapple inssider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode before we get to the Apple podcast thing let me just mention very briefly it did come out that iOS 14.5 will publicly be released next week most likely Tuesday or Wednesday April 27th or 28th so it will be publicly available mask unlock all the privacy app stuff apps have to opt into the ask not to track thing so that will be coming out next week and then Apple card was actually the very first announcement that Tim Cook talked about he announced Apple Card family where multiple people can merge their apple cards and even their credit lines into one account and kids 13 and over can be added to the Apple Card family if they're in your iCloud family as well that's pretty interesting and also he talked about how everyone in the family will get credit score type credit all using the same Apple card account I'm not sure how that all works but interesting that you can now give kids teenagers Apple cards with spending limits Tim Cook specified so that's pretty cool we'll put a link in show notes to that all right and now for the big one I I've been thinking about this a lot ever since the event the second announcement in the entire spring-loaded event was that apple is now bringing podcast subscriptions and giving creators the ability to create subscriptions with bonus or exclusive content where listeners of podcast can sign up through Apple through the Apple podcast app and can pay for those subscriptions you know it when it was kind of leaked before the event the idea was is this going to be apple selling exclusive podcast like apple original podcast and you add it to the Apple One bundle but no this is for creators and companies to have those exclusive feeds and to be clear this is the patreon thing this is what other websites will do on their own where listeners pay money and get an adree episode or some kind of bonus content we ironically literally just launched a patreon last episode patreon.com inssider which will probably stick around for a few reasons that we'll talk about in a moment but more details have come out about this apple podcast Subscription Service First of all like the developer account that you have to have in order to submit an app to the App Store there's an annual fee the developer one is $99 this one is only $19.99 so you do have to pay $20 a year to be able to offer podcast subscriptions through Apple whatever you charge and people pay you Apple does get a 30% cut of that income so this is a similar model to the App Store and I say similar because Apple just changed the App Store model where if you make less than a million dollars a year the cut is 15% for Apple developers I really wish they would have done that for the Apple podcast World especially when the amount of money traveling through the podcast space is probably much less than the app space 30% cut Apple's going to take the first year of any subscription and then it will drop to 15% transaction fee basically they will take that from your buyers of your exclusive content the second year and later but once you get into the fine print of this podcast Subscription Service there's some interesting things in the terms of conditions one Apple owns the relationship with the customers so like the App Store customers are buying the app from Apple and if some refund or something like that is requested like they are now having to deal with Apple not you really the podcast maker Apple owns the relationship if you choose to host your exclusive content with apple and this is the first time this is available the entire history of podcasting you had to host your audio files and your feed elsewhere and apple just said you can submit it to our directory and we will list your podcasts in our directory now you can actually host your podcast with apple as a first-party host and so you send your audio file to Apple they hand the feed for the exclusive content or whatever podcast and when you do that Apple does reserve the right to add DRM protection to your audio files and they also reserve the right to add transcripts for your podcast files this is kind of in the fine print and I'll put a link to this website Nathan gathright he actually really went in and read everything in the terms and conditions so some of the things I mentioned like DRM first party hosting if you're going to upload your audio file directly to Apple it has to be a wave or flak file you can't upload an MP3 which is what many many podcasting people use as their audio file you're granting the right for Apple to use your podcast content to train machine learning and the this agreement covers Apple podcasts everywhere including on Android and what is interesting here is and I said this in our Roundup article on Apple Insider Apple has really pioneered podcast for a long time in 2005 Apple launch podcast as a free thing they house the directory they let creators make podcast however they're going to do it and they listed them and that's how it's been literally for the past 15 to 16 years this is the first move Apple has made to create a closed podcast content system meaning if you do exclusive podcast content through Apple using this new podcast Subscription Service it will only be listenable in the Apple podcast app you will not be able to use overcast or pocketcast or Castro nor at the moment could you even listen on an Android phone at the moment Apple podcasts is not an app available on Android Apple music is there other Apple apps are there but there's no apple podcast app I believe we'll probably see that soon but this is the first time Apple has made a move to close this ecosystem a little bit rather than leaving it wide open like they always have been and have some mixed feelings about it Wes what were you feeling thinking about this well the 30% thing I'm not a big fan of I at first I was going to come in here and argue well if they hosted the files I would argue 30% is fine but apparently they do I explain it to me like I'm five I if me walks up to Apple and says okay I have a brand new podcast that I just recorded I is there a process I of I give Apple money give them my podcast they host it and they pop it on Apple podcast that's a totally internal Loop now like that can happen yes and you can create a new show now Apple podcast connect it was kind of down for most of yesterday but now they've redesigned it and when you want to create a new show there's an option to create a new show and if you want to you can just record your audio file and do the rest directly through Apple give them your audio file do the Apple podcast information the title the descriptions do the episode information you could do it all inside apple and basically have an apple hosted podcast or you can still have the option to do like what we do we host our podcast with Fireside and you can do all your podcast work in there upload your file there do your feed and description stuff there and then give that RSS feed to Apple if you want to it is that way with a public podcast if you just want a free open podcast and it's actually the same process if you want paid exclusive content so let's just be real we at Apple Insider we literally just launched a patreon with adree feed patreon.com inssider we're probably going to keep it going for a while because again you cannot use exclusive content in apple podcasts in other podcast apps and we have a large percentage of people that listen in thirdparty apps when we set up that same deal because we're most likely going to be offering it in the Apple podcast ecosystem as well I would either upload that adree audio file directly to Apple for Apple to create that private podcast available just by someone paying for it users can also check a box and say this is just a public podcast but we will do a paid podcast for that adree deal and again I can give that audio file to Apple or if I wanted to I could create some secret podcast feed somewhere I can make a private podcast feed in Fireside I could just have a server somewhere and not publish it publicly but give that XML fee to Apple and apple won't host my audio files but they'll use that XML feed as the exclusive content feed does that make sense yeah no this this is really cool and sad in the same way again like it we're cutting off the rest of the podcast apps this makes me think that very soon I might have to abandon overcast just because something I want is going to be on Apple podcast and nowhere else and I'm not going to manage multiple podcast apps right the again the 30% cut seems extreme but for someone who's aspiring to be a podcaster and just has their file in hand I think they're going to just shoot right through that and be just fine for existing podcast companies or people like realfm or ATP yeah they're going to look at that and think I can probably do better on my own using stripe and whatever uh Management Services to receive payments and go that route sure having it all in one spot makes sense uh this is a direct competitive play with what Facebook just announced um who's also trying to uh host and record and do the whole man audio management within the Facebook app which is terrifying please don't go to Facebook don't do it as far as things go I'm excited by the prospect that this provides cuz all I need now is transporter on iPad and I could record and upload podcasts to Apple all on my iPad that would be really awesome honestly um again very soon might hear some changes to how iPad OS handles audio intense that's very exciting but that'll probably never happen so for sure so I agree that for someone just starting out it is been confusing to start a podcast like this is why services like anchor had been so popular because they're like you can host your podcast for free we'll do all the work for you just record in our app give us your text for your episode title and descriptions and we will make you a podcast I do like that apple is now offering that ability to people I mean for $20 a year any other service where you're going to host your podcast it's going to cost you more than that so cost-wise if someone wants to have a podcast an apple podcast this is really good for those creators and I would even say I would trust apple with my podcast stuff before some of the other companies cuz like I think even ankor has been bought by Spotify if you were using anchor before you know be wary your podcast might also be exclusive to the Spotify app pretty soon so looking at our metrics for Apple Insider I'm looking at the Apple Insider podcast 75% of our listeners use the Apple podcasts app to listen to this show if we do exclusive content through the Apple podcast app it'll already be available to 3/4 of our listeners so for us again it helps that we are an apple Centric podcast as far as what user agents people use it would be probably very beneficial for us to offer this also in something like patreon there is a barrier to entry where if someone wanted to support the Apple Insider podcast right now they would have to create a patreon account they would have to use Apple pay or whatever credit card to sign up over there and you are managing a different account now doing it directly in the Apple podcast app it does make it a little easier someone already listening to the Apple Insider podcast will see a button that says get this show ad free for however much a month they tap the one button approve the purchase like they would buying an app or buying a song they already have a credit card on file with Apple for their Apple ID and boom they now have that bonus content feed right there in their podcast app so it does make for an easy easier system for onboarding and managing those users but for the other 25% of our listeners they would have to either switch to the official Apple podcast app or you have to have some kind of system available for them like patreon or like the guys at ATP and relay FM they have their own proprietary systems which is not cheap to implement or easy to do but they do it and you know obviously that's probably the best because you get the lowest conversion rates but this is also more expensive than patreon and other services like patreon you can get it down to like 5 to 7% of they take the revenue and this is obviously three times or more more than that so it is a monetary question especially if you do podcast for like a living 30% is now a big price to pay as opposed to what you might have done on those other platforms and you have to weigh it early on if you're planning on turning this into a career say you're joeo just starting a podcast you bring all of your audience to Apple podcast and use their service to get to do everything and then later think oh no Apple's taking all of my money I need I'm getting too big for this I need to move out what do you do I mean are you yeah I mean obviously you can probably transition to the XML format and move your move your stuff over but I I I just think it becomes a problem uh later on down the road for a lot of these creators coming in early and just uh choosing Apple so that that might be another risk yeah yeah and so overall I have mixed feelings I don't know how it's say it it's a little weird to see apple play the we are open for 15 years in this area of our business namely podcast which isn't really a business it was just a free thing they did and the directory was a huge benefit to podcasters to make the move of hey you can do exclusive content directly in our app but it's going to be a locked down system you know it's also Services Revenue play Apple is trying to more and more get Services revenue from different streams and this would be a big one again 30% of a bunch of podcast Revenue feeds is a good chunk of money I I was going to say I think I'm okay with this if only because they had to make a play in this space they had to do something and out of everything they could have done this is fine like they didn't close up Apple podcast they didn't introduce a monthly fee for some uh exclusive podcast plus thing that no one's probably going to ever listen to they're keeping it kind of open kind of closed they're they're Towing that line but they're at least competing in the space now whereas they just weren't doing anything before and had to do something so I think I'm I'm okay with this yeah and it remains to be seen you know our patreon we've we've have some supporters and we appreciate everyone who has supported it now on patreon.com not a huge response right away and maybe it's just because you love hearing about our sponsors and they're amazing which I totally get it but I would be curious the conversion rate with the ease of signing up for exclusive content in the Apple podcast app with what will probably be one tap plus approving the purchase and then boom it's in the app I mean that barrier to entry might encourage a lot more people to pay for exclusive content which would be good for podcast creators and the only other negative might be if Apple were ever to choose to remove the podcast directory API from third parties because right now apps like overcast and pocketcast actually use the Apple podcast directory to power their apps and if Apple were ever to shut that down because it wants to make its content even more exclusive while there are some third parties like the podcast index and other people trying to make podcast directories that are open and free it would affect a lot of the podcast industry and thirdparty apps and that would be unfortunate but apple does not say they are doing that now and has doesn't seem to have any plans to do that so that's good well I know we went a little long this week but I wanted to cover all the stuff that happened at the springloaded event and the new Apple podcast subscription service for sure wanted to give a few shout out to listeners who listen around the world Jeff sent me an email he listens from Switzerland which is amazing Stuart listens from Australia that's pretty cool and then Matias listens all the way from Argentina so shout out to you guys thank you for listening I would love to hear what you all think are you going to be getting some air tag I don't know how to pronounce it anymore are you looking at that new iPad Pro or iMac or Apple TV I'd love to hear from you you can tweet at West and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes you can shoot me an email if you have a podcast that you host and you'd like to have an apple Insider staffer as a guest we'd love to hear from you those instructions are in the show notes as well if you'd like to support the show we have a patreon account at patreon.com apppp inssider sign up there and you will get an RSS feed of the show with no ads it's totally sponsor free and you get the show a little early as well plus some other bonus content so check out our patreon at patreon.com apppp Insider and check out our homekit Insider show that comes out every Monday we're going to be talking about stuff from the event of course and we talk about other smart home and homekit stuff and check out Apple Insider daily our daily podcast with the Top Apple headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by our friends at masterclass headspace and our new sponsor today Rogue amoeba very excited to have them on we'll talk about those in a moment but joining me on this fateful episode Wes hilard to talk about the iPad Pro what's up Wes Hey Stephen just excited to spend a bunch of money this week you are totally right so we're going to talk about all those things obviously the springloaded event happened earlier this week we did a recap episode and try to get it out as quick as possible I think I made it in about 70 minutes and you can listen to that for kind of just a fast rundown of everything the event announced and everything Apple released but today we're going to go in depth and Wes I want to go in reverse chronological order of the event because the iPad Pro is what you and I have talked about for many a weeks maybe even before we just touch on that you know a little meta discussion about the event itself this has been now maybe what the fifth or sixth virtual event you had dubdub last year you had the three fall events you know they've kind of got it down to a science a little bit they've kept it to an hour I think all these virtual events have been a pretty tight hour everything extremely well produced obviously but what did you just think about the event overall it was pretty fun uh I believe this is the fifth one and now we have two events with spy themes we got uh 007 right last time and this time we got mission impossible so you know what it's funny too I think when the airpods generation 2 were launched that came with a video of someone running spy like and tapping for the hey Siri so yeah there's definitely a spy theme going on well remember when that one poor person had to run all the way across Apple Park to give Tim Cook the clicker yes and you know speaking of Tim Cook he usually has his deal where he'll open the program and he'll close the program maybe do a little transition in the middle but this time Tim cook not only did he have kind of two big announcements at the beginning of the event and I'm talking about the Apple card and the Apple podcast thing which we'll get to in a little bit but then he also starred in this year's spy thing and I have to say I'll be honest I was not expecting Tim Cook's face Mission Impossible style like face mask off to uh the introduce the iPad Pro yeah that that was pretty funny and of course it's already been memed around the internet so I expect to see that Tim Cook face on everything now absolutely and so let's dive into one of the biggest announc going in reverse chronological order again there's chapters in the episode listeners if you want to jump to the product that you're most interested in you can look at the chapters in your podcast app of choice and jump around but we are going to talk about the iPad Pro first of all now of course I have to mention all the memes of earthwind and fire they could not stop the 2021 iPad Pro from coming out at least in the spring even though it is going to be actually available like miday you know maybe we'll say we were both right kind of came out right in the middle yeah I I just knew that there was no way they were going to do this in March if they had announced it at whatever March what 14th 24th event it it would have been right at a year and apple when was the last time Apple really did iPads one year one after the other and I'm not talking about the iPad 4 but like it's it's just very rare especially for iPad Pros to get updated on such a regular basis I was expecting it in the fall at the latest like I this wasn't going to be a 2022 product of course March just felt too early I expected WWDC just because that once we were out of March it felt like April was just never going to have an event so I'm I'm happy to see it now and uh that way we can get our money out of our pockets sooner get get our finances ready cuz WWDC who knows Apple could always throw out a little bit more Hardware yes we'll find out what was interesting is so many of the rumors and leaks were accurate in regards to not only the iMac and the other Air Tech we'll talk about but the iPad Pro it was rumored that the USBC connector would become Thunderbolt the mini LED display but just on the larger side and of course the chip upgrade we didn't know what it was going to be many people thought they'd stick with the a series chip and that was actually pretty surprising that they just said we're going to put the M1 chip the same chip that's in the MacBook Pro MacBook Air and Mac Mini now the new iMac that's actually what's going be to be powering the new iPad Pro so so it's the it's got the M1 and if you look at the details you can actually spec up a new iPad Pro to match the specs of any of the M1 Max that we've had previously it's the M1 chip you can now get it up to 2 terabytes the 1 in2 tbte models of the new iPad Pro come with 16 GB of RAM which I thought was interesting that Apple was actually surfacing the ram numbers now they haven't done that historically and that's exactly what you could get on the other M1 Max you can't get more than 16 gigs of RAM you can't get more than 2 TBT and so this iPad Pro if you spec it out Plus Cellular is actually the most powerful Apple silicon device arguably the most powerful in the lineup aside from certain configurations of the Mac Pro it's pretty amazing right so we can basically spec this thing very similarly to these MacBooks and weird is uh before people discussing oh well what's the difference between an iPad Pro and a Macbook and you know looking at the chipsets and architectures like it was really hard to compare because they were there one was Intel one was Apple's arm chip one had uh different gpus and all this stuff going on and now they are identical processors identical storage options uh this one has fast storage so who knows we might even have faster storage than what's in the MacBooks or maybe at least similar storage to what's in the MacBook Pro I guess we'll have to dig into the details for that but very comparable specs now looking at this iPad Pro the only difference really is it's a tablet which touchscreen apple pencil all that sure but the operating system iPad OS so and that was the big question you know people have been tweeting at both you and myself about now what is going to happen with the software and this is what I feel like the rest of the story has to be told at WWDC I tweeted before the weekend before the event the story would make sense if Apple said Final Cut Pro logic now on the iPad Pro which again you can get the same specs on this iPad Pro as the other M1 Max that run those pieces of software Final Cut and logic now they didn't mention anything software-wise basically in pretty much any of the products aside from the fine my things and the new camera features on the FaceTime camera which we'll talk about in a moment but I have to imagine that at WWDC we're going to see an iPad OS 15 hopefully with some different multitasking and utility options and some Pro apps now Apple actually straight up talked about Luma Fusion for video editing on the iPad Pro they showed off Lightroom adobe's Lightroom on the iPad Pro so they have no problem showing off Pro apps but I guess the question is will they bring their own first-party Pro apps to the iPad Pro what do you think I think it's obvious why why would we have 16 gigs of RAM otherwise especially now like we have the discussion has to arise again of xcode because out of all the things and all of the reasons to got here and spec up a Macbook what are you really doing it for I mean yes it'll help with video production and stuff but from what I hear most of the time the developers are the ones going out here and getting that big MacBook with 16 now 32 gigs of RAM and you know specking it up back when it was the a 16 gigs of RAM is a limitation for developers and they were complaining about it and whatnot but for an iPad from that perspective just having that uh development on the go or or to have the ability to test apps directly on the uh device that you're developing them for I think it makes a lot of sense to at least have way more RAM than maybe what the consumer's expecting because now you're developing the app producing it on the device Distributing it to other iPads which have much less Ram because most people even after this comes out are still going to have 8 gigs six gigs or sometimes four gigs of RAM on iPads so right in addition to the M1 chip 16 gigs of RAM the 2 terby of storage the connector is now a thunderbolt SL usb4 connector so that USBC Port is actually Thunderbolt meaning you could take advantage of fast data transfer speeds if you have a thunderbolt SSD or other hard drive and it also supports 6K displays which they actually mentioned specifically that the iPad Pro now supports the pro display xdr which is a pretty big deal a couple people tweeted at us and said in the presentation they used this one image showing someone editing video on the iPad Pro and then a large monitor in the background connected to the iPad Pro with like a preview window on that now you can read into it like maybe hopefully Apple will bring that separate display support port and iPad os5 you can do that already in some apps on the iPad keynote probably the one that most people would realize you can do a presentation on an iPad connected to a display and you get presenter display on the iPad and then the actual keynote on that secondary display but interesting that they would talk about Pro display xdr it supports it but as of right now you can't do Native dual screen support on the iPad Pro you think that's going to come Apple hasn't shied away from showing external monitor support on the IP ad before their presentations have uh shown people using iPads connected to monitors especially back when they first introduced the iPad Pro with USBC it's nothing new to see this and I I I don't know which application it was I wasn't paying that much attention to that portion but it could have been Luma Fusion or iMovie yeah I know uh a lot of these Pro apps have full screen external monitor support one I use every day is the Affinity photo and Affinity designer uh both of those pop your image that you're working on in full screen on the external monitor with the UI remaining on the iPad uh there's several apps that do this especially Pro apps and I think Apple wants to push that yes you can use an external monitor but again this is the USBC story if you remember the iPad Pros came out with USBC and everyone's like wow yes finally no more lightning no more dongles of that regard possibly new things but guess what iPad OS hadn't been updated so this magical New Port couldn't do anything there was no storage support there was no you couldn't connect a lot of peripherals and stuff yet but we got the full story at WWDC and I think this is again going to be the case iPad OS is due for a huge overhaul so in addition to that Port 5G cellular connectivity on the iPad Pro the slightly better cameras we still have the liar going to talk about the center stage feature in a moment but one of the big standout features and this is just on the 12.9 in display like the room suggested is the quote liquid Retina xdr Display end quote that's Apple's name for the display on the 12.9in iPad only but it is that mini LED technology that we have been talking about Apple stated 10,000 mini LEDs make up the display of the new iPad Pro 2500 local dimming zones basically this display is going to look great now we just need to actually see it and look at it and compare with other monitors to see how good it is but knowing Apple's record with display Technologies this is probably going to look amazing but again only on the 12.9 in okay so yeah the this screen is going to be pretty amazing because it has uh over 2500 local dimming zones and that's more than the pro display xdr and I mean this probably this isn't going to beat out the pro display on certain things I think color and stuff maybe will still be limited to a certain point but uh cuz it's P3 wide color right uh rather than whatever non since the pro display is using but it's still going to be an amazing screen and uh viewing content on it it's going to be wild but editing is going to be even more important like editing a photo with absolute color accuracy sure none of your friends are going to be seeing the photo in the same Brilliance as you once you publish it on Facebook but at least you know that by the time you hit publish that you have seen it in its purest form and you're putting it on the web you know without any uh weird artifacts or whatever and that's pretty exciting to me yeah yeah absolutely and you know it's interesting the best experience for watching something on an Apple device this 12.9in iPad Pro with something like I don't know airpods Max with spatial audio I mean the entertainment experience is going to be great really curious just to mention it here how that will compare to the new iMac which Apple has now stated has spatial audio they redid the entire speaker and microphone array on the new iMac I I don't know spatial audio coming from an iMac speakers sounded a little funny to me but we have to hear it to judge yeah cuz spatial audio has a lot to do with the tracking of like your your head right how you're turning your head so I think maybe that just has to more to do with the Dolby Atmos support because Apple seems to kind of switch the terminology there when they're describing movies and video with spatial audio with Dolby Atmos because Atmos again is right it's like you're sitting in a room full of speakers but you only have two speakers in front of you they're just simulating that right versus spatial audio is your the rather than having a bunch of stationary speakers the speakers are able to move around you as it plays the audio so right Apple seems to kind of I don't think they mean to fool people into thinking that it's better than it is but I it they're very similar Technologies so it's something we'll have to try out for sure yeah so the final feature I want to discuss they announced something called center stage and what Apple said is the frontf facing camera on the iPad Pro is now an ultrawide camera and it will smart zoom in out and pan when you're on something like a FaceTime call and the center stage technology will be available to third parties so hopefully apps like Zoom Google meet Skype apps like that can also take advantage of center stage and so if you move around in the frame or move out of the frame of your iPad Pro's FaceTime camera that it will recrop reso the image to include you and if even a second person enters the frame it will zoom out and try to keep you both in the frame during the call this sounds really interesting and I can't wait to look at it actually in action to see how quickly and how accurately it can perceive people I'm not sure that I've ever had this experience uh using FaceTime I don't know what it is with apple presentations but it's it's like you're watching a 4K movie through the FaceTime camera and I just never have that experience I know these selfie cameras and stuff are getting way better especially on the iPads but whenever I make a FaceTime call everything just looks like much and I know it's has I know it has to do with Wi-Fi connections but even when I've had gigabit Wi-Fi I I I think both parties have to have absolutely perfect connections probably even wired connections and you just can't move at all and maybe your image will look absolutely crystal clear perfect because these presentations always blow my mind like wow look at that that's crystal clear picture it's following them around it's really nice but I I will never achieve that I I don't have a lab to test this in to try it out so the new iPads they go on sale April 30th a week from now if you're listening to the show when it comes out and they're saying it'll be available the second half of May so no promise of Order April 30th and then you'll have it in hand May 7th they say the second half of May so curious how long that lead time is going to be we've heard about lots of supply chain shortages with chips and all that so again that's probably making that lead time unknowable to a certain extent so pricing for these new iPad Pros the 11 in starts at $7.99 the 12.9 in starts at $10.99 the 11 in seems to be the same price as last year the 12.9 is a $100 increase that xdr display most likely having to do with that so if you start there you get 8 gab on either of those models but if you spec this thing out let's say you're someone named Wes or Steven and you're going to pre-order this thing on April 30th and you get the 12.9 in display space square or silver no cost difference there you get two terabytes which to be clear the two terabytes is like a $1,100 markup so 128 GB on the 12.9 in 1099 the 1 tbte is $117.99 so that's a $700 jump and the two terabytes is an $1,100 jump when you get that much storage so if you get the 2 terabytes and maybe you want to add cellular which is now a $200 Edition that brings the 12.9 in iPad Pro cost to $23.99 not including Apple Care which is $150 more or any accessories this is not a cheap iPad Wes no and I mean you can pretty much you're going to shoot over $3,000 after taxes if you buy everything yeah cuz you get the uh the magic keyboard and we didn't mention the white magic keyboard I I don't recommend anyone buy that unless you're Johnny I have in a solid white room sterilized you know wash your hands seven times I did think about that like that's got to show dirt pretty bad because I think that's the first time we've seen an iPad Smart Keyboard or keyboard folio case in white and I mean that's got to show some dirt if you've ever used the regular magic keyboard they age okay but they do start to show their age after a period of time yeah and I'm sitting here looking at my magic keyboard for my iPad Pro and it's black and it's still the same I mean there's a little bit of wear on the keyboard after it's used or whatever but yeah it's it's not dirty looking and that's something I would be afraid of buying a white keyboard for sure but I I wanted to mention though yeah like if you buy everything if you buy the apple pencil the magic keyboard and max out this thing at 2 terabytes you're you're going over $3,000 and that's MacBook Pro 16inch territory right and right this is even crazy for me who who buys this thing every year and I mean I use it for work every single day I don't need two terabytes so thankfully the 16 gigs of Ram is coming with 1 tab so I'll be getting the 1 tab option if you can spe this thing to be more expensive than some MacBook Pro Models with their high-end models Apple really needs to sell us on the software right and um I've got a small Theory not to run to we have a whole event to talk about but just to say yeah the iPad OS how much has it really changed since it's first became iPad OS in uh in version 13 right not much it's the same home screen it's the same app switcher side it's been a few years and especially last year with the widget changes and stuff to iOS iPad OS barely got touched and I'm just sitting here spitballing that iPad OS 15 might just be a big Paradigm Shift uh we're not going to see Mac OS levels of like window resizing and stuff but I have a feeling that Apple really needs to sell this thing in the software story they know that they're smart people and if we go to WWDC and we have the same home screen with the same app switcher and it's it's going to look bad and are going to be like why did we just spend $3,000 on this thing you know you're not telling us the whole story here yeah I agree I think we're going to see some big changes at dubdub and I will join you I'm going to do the one terabyte thankfully I don't edit video on my iPad I do all my podcast work and audio files are still a reasonable size so I don't need to store a ton of stuff so I'll go with the one terabyte cellular I'm almost sold on I feel like if I'm going to keep this thing for a few years maybe I want that just in case I want to activate it at some point and saving $200 once you get to these kind of numbers it's like well just get it and it turns out some carriers are doing promotions uh Verizon gives you a $200 gift card for the Verizon gift card I don't know what you would use it for right AT&T is the worst one they give you $5 a month for 30 months I don't know why anyone would even care about that yeah and what's what's the other one T-Mobile they give you a $200 actual card that you can go and spend anywhere so if you're T-Mobile you might be a little bit lucky yeah when it comes to 5G coverage depending on your location you know T-Mobile 5G coverage can be pretty fast my experience with AT&T is like me you know you're not going to get Ultra wide band probably most places you use it so you know use discretion on that but April 30th pre-orders open you'll have to beat Wes and myself on pre-ordering this thing that morning we will be refreshing feverishly I believe at 88: a.m. pre-orders usually start so I'll let you know when I when my order goes through with yeah I'll be posting my delivery dates as soon as I have them for sure this episode is brought to you by loop back from Rogue amoeba listen guys I am so excited that Rogue amoeba has come on and sponsored this episode because I use rogba products every day and that is not an exaggeration and one of the coolest pieces of software they have for your Mac is called loop back listen if you do anything with audio on your Mac you're going to want to check out loop back let's say for instance you're on a zoom call and you would love to play audio from something on your Mac maybe it's a song from Apple music or maybe you want to play the audio from a YouTube video to get that into a zoom 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apple music and make that a single input device then when you open Zoom or whatever other application you choose that audio input device that loac has created as a virtual audio device and then whatever music you play in apple music and whatever you say in your microphone it all goes to that app it is incredibly powerful fortunately it's also incredibly easy to use loopback has an intuitive wire-based setup it makes it easy and obvious to understand exactly how your virtual devices work you can see where audio is coming from and where it's going to figure adjust experiment all just by clicking and dragging whether you're a podcaster a live performer or maybe a streamer loop back can help you and you can also use loop back with other rogia software like audio hijack which I use literally all the time to supercharge your recordings and all the audio stuff on your Mac guys I cannot recommend highly enough rogba loop back and while you're there check out audio hijack as well you can get a free trial today by going to Mac audio.com / insider2 Mac audio.com insider2 and you can download the free trial of loopback and then when you're ready to buy because after 30 seconds you will be listeners can save 21% off loopback with the coupon code Insider 21 all one word so download the free trial Mac audio.com inssider 221 and use the coupon code Insider 21 to get 21% off loop back software our thanks to rogba for making incredible audio software and for sponsoring this episode all right well right before the iPad Pro during the event Apple announced the new iMac it was long rumored John prer was the first one out there with the different color rumor saying that Apple's going to offer the new iMac in multiple colors and he was correct on that and as we'll talk about in a moment too the man predicted air tag he had the leak and he did it and he was correct but with the new iMac this is now also powered by the M1 a lot of people thought maybe we would see the next version of Apple silicon chips maybe the m1x or M2 but that's not the case the new iMac is powered by the same M1 processor that all the other Apple silicon Macs are this one is a 4 1/2k monitor so 4.5k and the screen size has increased from the previous 21 1/2 in to 24 in only one size screen right now which does ask the question will we see a larger iMac with a more power ful processor maybe they call it an iMac Pro maybe not but will we see a larger size that is more powerful than what we have here we're going to see like a 30in maybe 32 in um iMac in the future with the m1x M2 whatever it's going to be processor this iMac uh I think is just a Prelude to what Apple's going to do do next now maybe that bigger one won't have as many colors it'll just come in space gray and silver as usual at the very least seeing these colorful guys out there just gives us a little bit of Hope for what's coming down the line cuz the rumor right now is is uh we're basically going to see a pro display xdr esque iMac Pro running a very powerful Apple silicon chip and that's very exciting that is cool so the new iMac does come in seven different colors but not all colors are available at all price points so again it's got the M1 chip depending on the configuration you get the 8 core CPU and 7 core or 8 core GPU much like the MacBook Air you can side there we don't have all the configuration options yet I imagine you'll be able to get 16 gigs of RAM maybe up to 2 terab of storage but the colors the ports and touch ID which has now come to the magic keyboard a wireless touch ID for the first time those things are dependent on what configuration you start with so the base model the new iMac is $12.99 $1,299 and you get the seven core GPU but only two Thunderbolt USB 4 ports no magic keyboard with Touch ID and no gigabit Ethernet which is built into the power break which we'll talk about in a second and you only get four color options at that lower price point you get blue green pink and silver or you know the light non-color color and you have to jump up to the $1,500 model if you want the additional three color options which are yellow orange and purple and then on that model and higher you get two addition usb3 ports so that has a total of four USBC style ports two Thunderbolts two USB and you get touch ID wirelessly on the magic keyboard and the gigabit Ethernet port on the power break the ports ethernet and touch ID for the price difference I totally get that but to only have certain colors on the more expensive options seems a little strange to me yeah this is probably a supply chain play or whatever boring story but I'm I'm just going to imagine that there's this last dredge of Johnny I uh worshippers that hiding with an apple demanding that they only make Yi Max and they had to finally just make a deal saying no only these colors at higher price bottles make them pay for that color whatever the case may be it's kind it is kind of funny that Apple's saying no if you want a purple iMac you're spending some real real money yeah now all the accessories magic keyboard and the magic mouse or magic Trackpad come color matched to the color of your iMac which is pretty cool so if you get a yellow iMac you get yellow accessories as well if you go with the cheaper model iMac you can pay a little more for the magic keyboard with Touch ID or one with the numeric PAD as well so that's interesting these keyboards mice and trackpads you're basically getting this white keyboard with a little hint of color hidden between the keys or on the sides or the mouse and trackpad being bright white and that's it that are are we no longer getting the space gray options maybe in the future we'll get Pro Models but also Apple why no backlighting are you that afraid of you know losing a few days off of your battery life that we don't actually get any back lighting it's it's crazy to me that they've updated these keyboards and still withheld that feature that is strange and they also updated the Magic Mouse but still kep the charging port on the bottom which you know we're just used to it by now but it seems like if you're going to redesign all this stuff maybe take another pass at the Magic Mouse to allow it to charge and be used at the same time now the gigabit Ethernet port this is very interesting the power brick for the new iMac is actually a box that has a braided cable color matched to the iMac that magnetically attaches to the iMac for power and then another cable from the power brick goes to the wall for electricity but on that power brick is actually an ethernet port and that is where the iMac gets the ethernet connection is on that power brick which is super interesting we've not seen something like this aside from USBC hubs and all that but for Apple to do a first-party thing like that Neil use apple Insider was actually wondering would they add more ports to that kind of power brick maybe with more Pro machines maybe an SD card I feel like maybe not because that power brick is going to be on the floor or behind a desk and so it's probably only things that you would want to leave connected permanently like ethernet and power so that's interesting and it's also interesting to me that we need a magnetic power connector at the back of the iMac as if apple is assuming people are moving these around a lot and wants a quick release or quick connect power cable with magnets I I thought that was interesting yeah they've heard from the ATP guys who uh frequently carry IMAX to the beach in a suitcase oh that's right that's right I forgot about that this this is cool I it I mean what would you call this a MAG safe connector technically yeah basically we could see more mag safe show up in future Maxs I've seen people talking about that that's that's really exciting but I think it's just funny that Apple's invented the dongle and everyone's losing their minds it's like it's it's just it's another it's another dongle with a ethernet port in it I've seen some jokes online uh people are saying that the little uh place where the ethernet plugs in is actually just uh e uh Airport Express that they've connected to power they've just got a bunch laying around so might as well use them for the new IMAX exactly I think it's a cool idea maybe there could be some more things implemented into this little um kind of Hub dock thing I I wouldn't bet on it Apple just going to make it real nice and simple ethernet in done yeah now the headphone jack has moved to the side which kind of makes sense it was always kind of weird to reach behind the iMac to try and plug in a pair of headphones also a word on that touch ID magic keyboard it will not work with an iPad in case you were wondering some people were thinking you know you can use magic keyboards and pair them with an iPad just use the keyboard but you can't in fact use the touch ID on the new magic keyboard to unlock your iPad so just word of warning on that and then just also a little piece of news that came out after the event is that Apple Care Plus you'll be able to extend Apple Care Plus for Max indefinitely without having to go to that month-to-month option if you want to purchase Apple Care Plus extension packages once your current coverage expires you'll be able to do that going forward obviously including these new iMacs but here's here's my question for you Wes I saw this iMac everybody was very excited and I think I got a little spoiled at the renders that we had seen passed around by people like John prer where the render showed the iMac without a chin and so once they started the new iMac announcement and I almost assumed it would not have a chin and now seeing what the iMac looks like in quote unquote real life or at least in these renders I don't know if I'm crazy about how this thing looks from the front you know from the side obviously it's super thin looks great from the back it's super clean there's less ports so you know it's a nice clean look magnetic charging ports cool but as far as from the front the side that you like sit in front of all day I'm not sure if I am crazy about this design there's a few designs decisions here that it's a little weird I believe all of the displays have white bezels around the screen yes and then underneath is the colored chin which is a slightly different color than the rest of the body right I'm not sure what Apple's doing here at these do dual tone thing it's it's cool I guess but again if you're going to spend most of your time staring at the screen I feel like the area around the screen is the most important and the it feels a little bit I don't know like they just kind of gave up halfway and said oh the backs of these are beautiful but who cares about screen I actually had to keep looking at different pictures because I would see the pictures from the back and I was like okay those are pretty dark Rich colors then I would see the front and be like that's kind of more of a pale pastel color and I almost had to see like what a color is this actual thing but it is in fact that the sides and back are the darker Rich color and the front is that pastel lighter shade of the color and we got pink and orange why why skip over Red Apple come on I would have bought a red iMac instantly even as an iPad User just to have it in my room it's fine yeah I I thought it was funny to mention uh MKBHD said there's a reason why the headphone jacks on the side of the iMac it isn't even for usability purposes the iMac is now 11.5 mm thick and the headphone jack needs 14 mm in order to fit so they had to put it in the side they couldn't go anywhere else that's interesting and you know I think MKBHD actually tweeted out at the announcement that he's not crazy about the design either he says they're ugly yeah I I like again I like looking at the whole the whole product but when you're just looking at the display part it's it is strange I'm not a fan of the chin but I know why they did it obviously it's to that's where the whole computer is everything else is just speaker it's just they could have made it a tad bit thicker and through the CPU behind the speakers or in front of it or whatever and and been done but uh I guess they just really wanted to achieve the thinnest possible display yeah I guess the one picture of the guy with the yellow one sitting at the desk that's the coolest looking one but he also has like his entire Ambiance kind kind of matches that yellow so you I'm curious if you stick this in an office or even in a workplace if you choose a color that kind of doesn't match with everything else around it I guess it's not a huge deal but I don't know you almost have to be cognizant of that now I like I I really like the shade of green that they chose it's almost blue um which is nice yeah I I would struggle to choose one of these but luckily I don't have to um I'm probably going to if I ever do buy an iMac in the future it's going to be whatever fancy one comes out uh after this and it's probably going to be in space gray so exactly so the new iMac you'll be able to pre-order it April 30th again they're saying second half of May this thing will be available so unknown when it will ship but it starts at $12.99 pre-orders April 30th this episode is brought to you by headspace listen you've probably heard the word meditation before and maybe you even tried to do it but it didn't work for you maybe you felt like you were doing it wrong but if mental health is part of your self-care plan this year you owe it to yourself to try headspace head space is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easyto use app and is a beautiful app might I add headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research whatever the situation headspace really can help you feel better do you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation just for you do you need some help falling asleep headspace has wind down sessions their members swear by and for parents head space even has morning meditations you can do with your kids head space's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress improve sleep boost focus and increase your overall sense of well-being I'll be honest when I'm really working and I have a lot of stuff on my task list I can feel stressed pretty often and when I use headspace especially when I do it regularly every day or every day that I'm working it really helps my focus and peace of mind I also tried a new thing where I did some headspace sessions with my kids they have those specially made courses for kids either on Focus or attention or maybe it's actually anxiety that they're dealing with doing those mindfulness exercises with headspace with my kids actually helped me feel closer to them and it really helped their stress level too and if you haven't tried headspace in a while they actually have multiple speakers for different 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it's only updated every few years but it's okay we got the h12 bionic it is now capable of doing HDR at high frame rates and they've updated the AirPlay spec so if you capture HDR video on your iPhone 12 that Dolby Vision HDR that if you airPlay it to this new Apple TV 4K it will play at 4K 60 frames per second just via AirPlay so that's all well and good we actually did get thread built into the Apple TV box so that's nice but the big story here the new redesigned Siri remote so the flat black touch surface based Siri is no more and now we have a brand new Siri remote with more buttons actually has a five-way clickable directional pad that you can push down and click but you can also swipe across which is pretty cool and even a jog wheel reminiscent of the old iPod jog wheel if you want to scrub through a TV show very cool plus dedicated power buttons and mute buttons to work the your TV in addition to the Apple TV box and the Siri button has moved to the side so honestly it's not a super aesthetically pleasing remote but it doesn't matter because it will probably function really well and that's what matters yeah if you've seen me cynically replying to some people on Twitter uh a lot of people were expecting Apple to bring out a soundbar Apple TV and all of our wildest dreams accomplished PlayStation 5 graphics and stuff and I mean this whole time I've just been leaning on it's going to be the same box with a new chip hopefully a U1 which we didn't get I was hoping for a new new chip like you said but we got the a12 which is 2 years old so we've got 2019 Apple TV and that's fine I guess but are we going to be getting the A14 in 2024 it's it's just a very strange product line to me and I I don't see either this means one of two things to me either Apple doesn't really care because they have the Apple TV app everywhere and this really is just an apple arcade kind of like simple game machine or B they have something much bigger coming in the fall or maybe next year yeah it's possible you know it's also interesting because they add little Innovative features like this color balancing tool which you'll be able to use your iPhone hold it up to the Apple TV screen and the Apple TV will calibrate itself to have the best color possible for your specific TV so cool feature pretty interesting that feature is available on the current Apple TV 4K as well via the new update right very true you have you need iOS 14.5 I I just also like it's it's the a12 and the new new the new Siri remote which is also compatible with the old Apple TV so all we really got a12 processor that's it cuz all the new software features other than high frame rate HDR honestly I hadn't even realized the HDR wasn't at a full 60 frames per second I guess it was at 30 before yeah but yeah that's that's it that's the only new thing and I mean that's fine again this there could be a software story at WWDC I doubt it because Apple TV never has a software story it's it's just a little disappointing the Seri remote's fine it's a little bit utilitarian for my taste I I like that they kept the touch things with the buttons that's great but overall it's just not the product that we wanted I think yeah you can buy the remote also any Apple TV that runs tvos is compatible with this new Siri remote and you can buy it separately for $59 which is actually cheaper than the old Siri remote I think the old one was $79 as you can get this remote separately it works with older Apple TVs unfortunately there's no U1 chip and again as we're about to talk about air tag it's interesting that they didn't put the U1 chip where you could find this remote easily with your iPhone while they just announc the air tag U1 Precision finding and all that was really hoping that the Siri remote would have that too so this this has been going around everyone's been very upset I'm not entirely sure that that means that there's just absolutely no finding capabilities I I mean it it might cuz Apple doesn't really sneak in things like that but um it's Bluetooth LE air tags also use Bluetooth LE if the remote has access to that we there's a chance that you could ask Siri on your phone to find the remote and it might be able to give you a direction I don't know how well directional things are with Bluetooth maybe it's completely unable to give you the direction the signal is coming from I have no idea but technically speaking I think maybe there's something there that can be used but yeah absolutely disappointing that there's no U1 chip again probably just due to this whole chip shortage thing anyway right so the Apple TV like the iMac and iPad Pro you can order it April 30th they say again available second half of May 32 GB model for $180 and a 64 gigb model for $200 you know pricing wise I really wish Apple would have done something to hit that under $100 price point for people to get into the Apple TV face but that's the price it's it's weird again cuz we didn't get price drops for the other products I believe they're just going to kill the previous Apple TV like they've done with other products slowly phase it out let other retailers discount it as need be but yeah the $200 price point cuz I'm going to buy the more expensive one cuz I Do download a lot of Apple arcade games that's really the only reason why you need that storage um 32 is just untenable I feel like you can get two games on the Apple TV at 32 gigs and you're done I can say from experience I've actually had to jump into the manage storage setting option on my Apple TV 4K cuz I got the 32 GB even for the one that my kids use apple arcade on and you do have to manage that storage once you get into like multiple games and it's not great I mean I would pay $200 for a 128 gig Apple TV that would have been nice but again this product feels very much tack on at the end of a a thing that don't it's not really a passion project get it out there get people to buy it if they buy it and move on like hopefully we'll see whatever if if ever a passion project from Apple TV but hard to say at this point after a few years of same same right all right and then we come to air tag we finally have the official announcement it is the name that had been leaked John proster with the original render from a long time ago rumored for so long air tag was officially announced it is exactly what we thought a location tracker lots of accessories it uses the U1 chip and Bluetooth LE you can attach it to Key rings and put it in bags or whatever it uses the find my app and system interestingly it actually has a user replaceable battery which was kind of startling for one for Apple to announce a product with a user replaceable battery I don't know the last time that has happened except for the magic mice and keyboards back when the daa battery was what it used but user replaceable like 2032 style battery that you can get at whatever store battery life should last about a year which is pretty cool and the feature of precision finding using that U1 chip you can basically look at your phone and a big arrow on your phone screen will point you in the direction of whatever air tag you're looking for is pretty cool I know I'm going to be picking up a number of these okay Stephen so I got to correct you here this is a completely different product from what was rumored the rumor was for air tags this is air tag completely different oh that's right that's right I've been trying to say air tag singular but it I don't know it just doesn't it draws me crazy I I remember the last time this happened was iPhone 10 versus iPhone x everyone with the the X leaked way ahead of time so we were all used to saying iPhone x and then Tim Cook walks out and says iPhone 10 and everyone's like what are you s anyway these are cool I remember uh Once Upon a Time people assume this would recharge maybe via an Apple Watch charger which was just very odd to even conceptualize uh how often would you need to recharge it the the small uh batteries thing that's fine that's great I think it is weird that Apple being the company they are give us replaceable batteries but what else are you going to do this you know standing on a mountain saying that we're this green Company by 2030 it's going to be you know reversing carbon emissions and stuff but also we sell you this thing that you have to give back to us after a year because it's worthless and yeah I don't I don't think that would would fly for a lot of people they've done that a few times with other products kind of a little edging that line and people have blown up about it so I'm glad they made the right decision here yeah I mean they could have done like what tile and other companies have done where you basically have to like mail in your tile again and get a new one at a discount but has anyone ever done that have you ever no they die and you you lose them in a closet somewhere and that's it yeah so I'm I'm very glad for this there's a there's a ton of accessories for it Apple has some first party accessories like keychains and Loops Hermes has like let's be honest ridiculous hundreds of dollar leather accessories for air tags they look really cool way too expensive they look cool way too expensive but the air tags themselves sorry but air tag itself is priced priced really nicely at $29 per air tag or you can get a pack of four for $99 which again looking at other competitors like tile who actually made a stink and wants to bring up some antitrust argument because of this location tracker uh pretty good pricing for that compared to other location trackers again I'll be picking up a number of them there water resistant again a year of battery life you can customize it with emoji and text and different things like that if your air tag gets misplaced and maybe someone else has it or some how you have an air tag in your possession accidentally someone dropped it in your bag or whatever it will actually start pinging or beeping after 3 days to let you know that you have an air tag that's not yours in your immediate vicinity so after 3 days it'll start making a noise saying hey this isn't your air tag and that's part of Apple's privacy initiative with this kind of location tracker I thought that was pretty interesting yeah these are really clever devices I mean already Samsung's announced that they're mimicking some of these features for their new tracking tags or whatever I I like the idea of them I'm going to buy a four pack I'm going to slap some emoji on these things and see what I can do with them I want to glue it to the back of my cat and so I can you know use fine my to find my cat hiding in my closet and stuff just for fun but maybe around its neck what do I mean what do you put a you put a collar on a cat right is that a thing you do yeah uh my cat has a a collar with a bell on it right now so it doesn't sneak up on me speaking of accessories for these things if you go on Amazon right now and search Air tag it'll try to auto Correct you so tell it not to but but there are already dozens of air tag products that you can buy from $5 to $40 most of them mimic Apple's designed I think like companies like uh what's the word spyin spyin those guys already have like an official air tag accessory I ordered that one cuz it looks nice for $17 plenty of stuff out there I'm waiting cuz it's going to happen pet collar companies and stuff like that are going to make air tag compatible collars and you just slip the tag in there and if you lose your dog well now you can find them uh with Apple's right chip I I think there's going to be a lot of uses here that people just haven't thought of or conceptualized yet just cuz no one's going to stick a tile on an animal just because the their tracking systems a little different and has a much smaller base whereas this is everyone with an iPhone will now be able to Ping that chip and even if you have an Android phone you can tap it and get information now my question is is how do you educate people because yeah sure everyone on the planet has either iPhone or Android but if you pick up this air tag how are they going to know that they can tap their phone to it and find a phone number it's it's just another one of those things that Apple has to figure out a good way to get the word out there maybe there'll be a big social thing maybe not but it it is an interesting product overall I'm I'm excited to just play around with it for sure now these you can actually pre-order right now as you listen to this podcast pre-orders opened at 8: a.m. eastern April 23rd Friday and they will be available next Friday April 30th so of all the products announced at the spring loaded event this one is available now I wanted to put this image in our notes because it's hilarious uh when I was spelunking when I was spelunking uh Amazon for air tags one of the air tag products had this image embedded in it I have no idea why we'll have to include it somewhere I don't know but um just so it's a it's a regular orange band that goes around the air tag fine that's that's fine but then in the background it's a woman holding a cell phone looking side eying this child this so strange it's such a strange advertisement it says remote listening follow anytime what does that mean it's not for the air tag it's it's such a Anyway Amazon is such an odd Marketplace super weird oh yes I I'll include that in the show notes you can enjoy that this episode is brought to you by masterclass with masterclass you can learn from the world's best Minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace you can learn scientific thinking and communication from Neil degrass Tyson The Art of Storytelling from Neil gaimon learn cooking from Gordon Ramsey and even directing from James Cameron with over 100 classes from a range of world class instructors the thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think I love taking masterclass courses and I've done several of them one of my favorites is music scoring and composition for film with Han Zimmer Han Zimmer has done so many of the scores you've probably heard in some of the biggest blockbuster movies and what I love is you can see inside his Studio you see the equipment he's using he's talking about storytelling and how themes and music can relate to specific characters in the movie it's just awesome to learn things like that from the people who are doing it in the business the cinematography and video quality is incredible they just look and sound great and lessons are only about 10 to 15 minutes you could do a lesson on your lunch break or maybe you started watching One on your phone and one of my favorite features is you can flip it into Audio Only mode and then listen to it like it's a podcast sitting in your car you can also watch on any device you choose you can watch on your iPhone your iPad your Mac you can use the web browser or their app on Apple TV and in addition to the video lessons masterclass provides you with downloadable lesson Recaps and supplemental materials so you can keep learning even when you're done with the course some of the best use cases for that are the cooking classes where you can get downloadable guides that are basically a high-end cookbook that you download from masterclass I highly recommend you check it out get unlimited access to every master class and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off an annual membership go to masterclass.com slapple inssider that's masterclass.com slapple inssider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode before we get to the Apple podcast thing let me just mention very briefly it did come out that iOS 14.5 will publicly be released next week most likely Tuesday or Wednesday April 27th or 28th so it will be publicly available mask unlock all the privacy app stuff apps have to opt into the ask not to track thing so that will be coming out next week and then Apple card was actually the very first announcement that Tim Cook talked about he announced Apple Card family where multiple people can merge their apple cards and even their credit lines into one account and kids 13 and over can be added to the Apple Card family if they're in your iCloud family as well that's pretty interesting and also he talked about how everyone in the family will get credit score type credit all using the same Apple card account I'm not sure how that all works but interesting that you can now give kids teenagers Apple cards with spending limits Tim Cook specified so that's pretty cool we'll put a link in show notes to that all right and now for the big one I I've been thinking about this a lot ever since the event the second announcement in the entire spring-loaded event was that apple is now bringing podcast subscriptions and giving creators the ability to create subscriptions with bonus or exclusive content where listeners of podcast can sign up through Apple through the Apple podcast app and can pay for those subscriptions you know it when it was kind of leaked before the event the idea was is this going to be apple selling exclusive podcast like apple original podcast and you add it to the Apple One bundle but no this is for creators and companies to have those exclusive feeds and to be clear this is the patreon thing this is what other websites will do on their own where listeners pay money and get an adree episode or some kind of bonus content we ironically literally just launched a patreon last episode patreon.com inssider which will probably stick around for a few reasons that we'll talk about in a moment but more details have come out about this apple podcast Subscription Service First of all like the developer account that you have to have in order to submit an app to the App Store there's an annual fee the developer one is $99 this one is only $19.99 so you do have to pay $20 a year to be able to offer podcast subscriptions through Apple whatever you charge and people pay you Apple does get a 30% cut of that income so this is a similar model to the App Store and I say similar because Apple just changed the App Store model where if you make less than a million dollars a year the cut is 15% for Apple developers I really wish they would have done that for the Apple podcast World especially when the amount of money traveling through the podcast space is probably much less than the app space 30% cut Apple's going to take the first year of any subscription and then it will drop to 15% transaction fee basically they will take that from your buyers of your exclusive content the second year and later but once you get into the fine print of this podcast Subscription Service there's some interesting things in the terms of conditions one Apple owns the relationship with the customers so like the App Store customers are buying the app from Apple and if some refund or something like that is requested like they are now having to deal with Apple not you really the podcast maker Apple owns the relationship if you choose to host your exclusive content with apple and this is the first time this is available the entire history of podcasting you had to host your audio files and your feed elsewhere and apple just said you can submit it to our directory and we will list your podcasts in our directory now you can actually host your podcast with apple as a first-party host and so you send your audio file to Apple they hand the feed for the exclusive content or whatever podcast and when you do that Apple does reserve the right to add DRM protection to your audio files and they also reserve the right to add transcripts for your podcast files this is kind of in the fine print and I'll put a link to this website Nathan gathright he actually really went in and read everything in the terms and conditions so some of the things I mentioned like DRM first party hosting if you're going to upload your audio file directly to Apple it has to be a wave or flak file you can't upload an MP3 which is what many many podcasting people use as their audio file you're granting the right for Apple to use your podcast content to train machine learning and the this agreement covers Apple podcasts everywhere including on Android and what is interesting here is and I said this in our Roundup article on Apple Insider Apple has really pioneered podcast for a long time in 2005 Apple launch podcast as a free thing they house the directory they let creators make podcast however they're going to do it and they listed them and that's how it's been literally for the past 15 to 16 years this is the first move Apple has made to create a closed podcast content system meaning if you do exclusive podcast content through Apple using this new podcast Subscription Service it will only be listenable in the Apple podcast app you will not be able to use overcast or pocketcast or Castro nor at the moment could you even listen on an Android phone at the moment Apple podcasts is not an app available on Android Apple music is there other Apple apps are there but there's no apple podcast app I believe we'll probably see that soon but this is the first time Apple has made a move to close this ecosystem a little bit rather than leaving it wide open like they always have been and have some mixed feelings about it Wes what were you feeling thinking about this well the 30% thing I'm not a big fan of I at first I was going to come in here and argue well if they hosted the files I would argue 30% is fine but apparently they do I explain it to me like I'm five I if me walks up to Apple and says okay I have a brand new podcast that I just recorded I is there a process I of I give Apple money give them my podcast they host it and they pop it on Apple podcast that's a totally internal Loop now like that can happen yes and you can create a new show now Apple podcast connect it was kind of down for most of yesterday but now they've redesigned it and when you want to create a new show there's an option to create a new show and if you want to you can just record your audio file and do the rest directly through Apple give them your audio file do the Apple podcast information the title the descriptions do the episode information you could do it all inside apple and basically have an apple hosted podcast or you can still have the option to do like what we do we host our podcast with Fireside and you can do all your podcast work in there upload your file there do your feed and description stuff there and then give that RSS feed to Apple if you want to it is that way with a public podcast if you just want a free open podcast and it's actually the same process if you want paid exclusive content so let's just be real we at Apple Insider we literally just launched a patreon with adree feed patreon.com inssider we're probably going to keep it going for a while because again you cannot use exclusive content in apple podcasts in other podcast apps and we have a large percentage of people that listen in thirdparty apps when we set up that same deal because we're most likely going to be offering it in the Apple podcast ecosystem as well I would either upload that adree audio file directly to Apple for Apple to create that private podcast available just by someone paying for it users can also check a box and say this is just a public podcast but we will do a paid podcast for that adree deal and again I can give that audio file to Apple or if I wanted to I could create some secret podcast feed somewhere I can make a private podcast feed in Fireside I could just have a server somewhere and not publish it publicly but give that XML fee to Apple and apple won't host my audio files but they'll use that XML feed as the exclusive content feed does that make sense yeah no this this is really cool and sad in the same way again like it we're cutting off the rest of the podcast apps this makes me think that very soon I might have to abandon overcast just because something I want is going to be on Apple podcast and nowhere else and I'm not going to manage multiple podcast apps right the again the 30% cut seems extreme but for someone who's aspiring to be a podcaster and just has their file in hand I think they're going to just shoot right through that and be just fine for existing podcast companies or people like realfm or ATP yeah they're going to look at that and think I can probably do better on my own using stripe and whatever uh Management Services to receive payments and go that route sure having it all in one spot makes sense uh this is a direct competitive play with what Facebook just announced um who's also trying to uh host and record and do the whole man audio management within the Facebook app which is terrifying please don't go to Facebook don't do it as far as things go I'm excited by the prospect that this provides cuz all I need now is transporter on iPad and I could record and upload podcasts to Apple all on my iPad that would be really awesome honestly um again very soon might hear some changes to how iPad OS handles audio intense that's very exciting but that'll probably never happen so for sure so I agree that for someone just starting out it is been confusing to start a podcast like this is why services like anchor had been so popular because they're like you can host your podcast for free we'll do all the work for you just record in our app give us your text for your episode title and descriptions and we will make you a podcast I do like that apple is now offering that ability to people I mean for $20 a year any other service where you're going to host your podcast it's going to cost you more than that so cost-wise if someone wants to have a podcast an apple podcast this is really good for those creators and I would even say I would trust apple with my podcast stuff before some of the other companies cuz like I think even ankor has been bought by Spotify if you were using anchor before you know be wary your podcast might also be exclusive to the Spotify app pretty soon so looking at our metrics for Apple Insider I'm looking at the Apple Insider podcast 75% of our listeners use the Apple podcasts app to listen to this show if we do exclusive content through the Apple podcast app it'll already be available to 3/4 of our listeners so for us again it helps that we are an apple Centric podcast as far as what user agents people use it would be probably very beneficial for us to offer this also in something like patreon there is a barrier to entry where if someone wanted to support the Apple Insider podcast right now they would have to create a patreon account they would have to use Apple pay or whatever credit card to sign up over there and you are managing a different account now doing it directly in the Apple podcast app it does make it a little easier someone already listening to the Apple Insider podcast will see a button that says get this show ad free for however much a month they tap the one button approve the purchase like they would buying an app or buying a song they already have a credit card on file with Apple for their Apple ID and boom they now have that bonus content feed right there in their podcast app so it does make for an easy easier system for onboarding and managing those users but for the other 25% of our listeners they would have to either switch to the official Apple podcast app or you have to have some kind of system available for them like patreon or like the guys at ATP and relay FM they have their own proprietary systems which is not cheap to implement or easy to do but they do it and you know obviously that's probably the best because you get the lowest conversion rates but this is also more expensive than patreon and other services like patreon you can get it down to like 5 to 7% of they take the revenue and this is obviously three times or more more than that so it is a monetary question especially if you do podcast for like a living 30% is now a big price to pay as opposed to what you might have done on those other platforms and you have to weigh it early on if you're planning on turning this into a career say you're joeo just starting a podcast you bring all of your audience to Apple podcast and use their service to get to do everything and then later think oh no Apple's taking all of my money I need I'm getting too big for this I need to move out what do you do I mean are you yeah I mean obviously you can probably transition to the XML format and move your move your stuff over but I I I just think it becomes a problem uh later on down the road for a lot of these creators coming in early and just uh choosing Apple so that that might be another risk yeah yeah and so overall I have mixed feelings I don't know how it's say it it's a little weird to see apple play the we are open for 15 years in this area of our business namely podcast which isn't really a business it was just a free thing they did and the directory was a huge benefit to podcasters to make the move of hey you can do exclusive content directly in our app but it's going to be a locked down system you know it's also Services Revenue play Apple is trying to more and more get Services revenue from different streams and this would be a big one again 30% of a bunch of podcast Revenue feeds is a good chunk of money I I was going to say I think I'm okay with this if only because they had to make a play in this space they had to do something and out of everything they could have done this is fine like they didn't close up Apple podcast they didn't introduce a monthly fee for some uh exclusive podcast plus thing that no one's probably going to ever listen to they're keeping it kind of open kind of closed they're they're Towing that line but they're at least competing in the space now whereas they just weren't doing anything before and had to do something so I think I'm I'm okay with this yeah and it remains to be seen you know our patreon we've we've have some supporters and we appreciate everyone who has supported it now on patreon.com not a huge response right away and maybe it's just because you love hearing about our sponsors and they're amazing which I totally get it but I would be curious the conversion rate with the ease of signing up for exclusive content in the Apple podcast app with what will probably be one tap plus approving the purchase and then boom it's in the app I mean that barrier to entry might encourage a lot more people to pay for exclusive content which would be good for podcast creators and the only other negative might be if Apple were ever to choose to remove the podcast directory API from third parties because right now apps like overcast and pocketcast actually use the Apple podcast directory to power their apps and if Apple were ever to shut that down because it wants to make its content even more exclusive while there are some third parties like the podcast index and other people trying to make podcast directories that are open and free it would affect a lot of the podcast industry and thirdparty apps and that would be unfortunate but apple does not say they are doing that now and has doesn't seem to have any plans to do that so that's good well I know we went a little long this week but I wanted to cover all the stuff that happened at the springloaded event and the new Apple podcast subscription service for sure wanted to give a few shout out to listeners who listen around the world Jeff sent me an email he listens from Switzerland which is amazing Stuart listens from Australia that's pretty cool and then Matias listens all the way from Argentina so shout out to you guys thank you for listening I would love to hear what you all think are you going to be getting some air tag I don't know how to pronounce it anymore are you looking at that new iPad Pro or iMac or Apple TV I'd love to hear from you you can tweet at West and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes you can shoot me an email if you have a podcast that you host and you'd like to have an apple Insider staffer as a guest we'd love to hear from you those instructions are in the show notes as well if you'd like to support the show we have a patreon account at patreon.com apppp inssider sign up there and you will get an RSS feed of the show with no ads it's totally sponsor free and you get the show a little early as well plus some other bonus content so check out our patreon at patreon.com apppp Insider and check out our homekit Insider show that comes out every Monday we're going to be talking about stuff from the event of course and we talk about other smart home and homekit stuff and check out Apple Insider daily our daily podcast with the Top Apple headlines in just a few minutes thanks for tuning in we'll catch you next time\n"