Episode 100: The Watch OS3 Upgrade - A Game Changer?

Not everyone is an outdoor runner or a swimmer, but for those who are looking to upgrade their smartwatch experience, Apple's latest WatchOS 3 update is a game changer. According to Neil, the host of this episode, the new watch faces, new features and improved performance make it worth considering an upgrade.

As we've discussed before, the new watch faces are sleek and modern, providing users with a more personalized experience. The update also includes several new features, such as the ability to open third-party apps directly from the watch face, allowing for greater convenience and control over your daily activities. Additionally, Apple has improved performance by increasing the processing power of the S3 processor, making it feel faster and more responsive.

But how much of a difference will this really make? Neil suggests that if you're not a heavy user of your smartwatch, you might not notice the upgrade. However, for those who are always on their watch, the performance boost is noticeable. According to Neil, "it certainly is faster" but it's not worth spending $400 on just for the sake of speed.

In contrast, Apple Watch Series 2 is a different story altogether. Neil suggests that if you're in the market for a new smartwatch and want to upgrade from an older model, the Series 2 is a great option. It offers several improvements over its predecessor, including faster performance, a larger display, and longer battery life.

But before we get into more details about the Apple Watch Series 2, let's talk about VPNs and popup blockers. Neil was asked by Dan Rer to provide some information on both topics. According to Neil, he doesn't really have much experience with popups, as they're not a major problem for him. He also acknowledges that ad blockers can be useful in certain situations, but notes that many websites rely on advertising revenue to support their content.

When it comes to VPNs, however, Neil has a more positive view. He's tried out several different services and was extremely pleased with TunnelBear. The app is easy to use, transparent about its pricing, and offers excellent value for money. Neil recommends TunnelBear to anyone looking to try out a VPN service on their iPhone or iPad.

But what should you be using a VPN for in the first place? According to Neil, it depends on your threat model. If you're trying to avoid being hacked by third-party entities, such as governments or hackers, a VPN can be an effective way to protect yourself. However, if your threat model is more focused on avoiding traffic from local networks and providers, then other measures may be sufficient.

To choose a reputable VPN service, Neil suggests looking for providers with zero log policies. Both NordVPN and Private Internet Access (PIA) claim to have such policies in place, so these are two options worth considering.

In conclusion, this episode of the Apple Insider podcast covers several topics related to smartwatches, including the latest WatchOS 3 update and some thoughts on VPNs and popup blockers. Whether you're looking to upgrade your watch or want to learn more about how to stay safe online, there's something for everyone in this episode.

For those interested in reading more about Neil's experiences with different VPN services, he can be found on AppleInsider.com, and on Twitter @VMarkS.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where we discuss all things Apple Mac iPhone iPad and more with me is editor and chief Neil Hughes hey Victor how's it going excellent how are you doing doing well settling into the new apartment I guess takes some time you know yeah well you fully kitted that thing out with with tons of Philip Hub bulbs and and things like that so I I think it ought to be great I'd love to see it someday yeah yeah it's uh it's nice to have everything kind of controlled by voice it's coming together slowly but uh yeah and that my friends is how you invite yourself to Neil's house we've got a ton of questions from our our listeners and readers and before we get to that I want to go over one of our uh our offers for all of our listeners so we've got some killer deals you can save $130 to $350 instantly on Apple's new touch bar MacBook Pros with Apple Care plus no tax in 48 states so this is a first come first served offer apple and cider readers can use exclusive coupons this week to instantly save between 130 to 350 on pre-orders for every possible configuration of Apple's new late 2016 MacBook Pros bundled with Apple Care uh this is through our friends at Adorama and we will have the link on our website come through our Apple price guide and use the promo code AP Insider and and Adorama will be happy to sell you one of these with the instant savings and also not collect sales tax on orders shipped outside of New York and New Jersey we'll go ahead and have that in the show notes and we'll get right into the show now so Neil one of the questions that we had was what are Apple's plans for the pro user and and I know that you don't exactly know Apple's plans at least not down to the detail but we we had an article that Roger wrote about this about how there a lot of people really concerned that apple is losing focus on the Mac that that uh there is no dedicated Mac team that there is no Mac Pro that that the Mac feels like an afterthought to iOS well to be clear there there is a dedicated Mac team uh the Mac is not dead uh but the focus is very much so on the iPhone uh that's just kind of the way things are that's where the money's at and that's what consumers are buying and and anybody who doesn't realize that has been paying attention uh this was a story that came out through Bloomberg this week and it was clear that Apple kind of wanted to get the jump on it because a few days before a memo from Tim Cook to an internal Apple employee or two internal employees leaked out conveniently uh saying that uh Apple saw a bright future for its uh its Mac desktops and that it had plenty of stuff in the pipeline but the comment great desktops are coming right right but the the way that the quote was worded led a number of people people myself included to believe that uh Apple sees the future of the desktop in the iMac and uh would seem to suggest that the Mac Pro which hasn't now been updated in I guess three years it was end of 2013 that the new design launched um it's kind of a niche product in what is already a niche subset of computing uh the Mac uh and it would seem that apple is not particularly focused on the Mac Pro and that is upsetting to a lot of users that uh want or Developers you know filmmakers whatever that want high-end machines but um I would have to say that you know from whatever the the numbers that Apple has internally whatever their justification for it is at the end of the day they're business and they're going to do what it takes to make money and to stay in business and most of the focus is on the iPhone and that's just the way it is so I I was reading in my Twitter feed this morning uh someone that I follow said that the the Mac is on maintenance mode and that the Mac is essentially existing as developer machine to build iOS apps I mean it's hard to disagree with that it's hard to disagree with that um you can see the level of innovation that's taking place in the Mac is uh not particularly high as compared to how it's been before um you know you have new thinner designs you have a switch to USBC ports you have better retina displays you have the touch bar um I really like current Macs I like the MacBook Pro but there's certainly a sense of when you see things like the uh what do they call that surface uh iMac ripoff the the one that the the Microsoft Surface that is the uh the the W kind of style thing right it it folds down into a desktop that you draw on yeah and I mean we're talking about Niche devices and that's certainly another one where not a lot of people are that are going to be doing traditional Computing are going to see a need for that device however uh it is generating Buzz for Microsoft I think it's easier for Microsoft to focus on products like that because they already lost the mobile race anyhow I mean you know apple is making money hand over fist from the iPhone the iPhone accounts for 60 70 some odd percent of its Revenue um and even the iPad is bigger than the Mac uh in terms of unit sales for sure um and revenue from the iPad is going back up now that the Pro Models are out so you know you you look at those uh options that are out there on the table right now and the Mac Pro is not something that's been getting focused and the MacBook Pro took a while to get updated and there's a lot of reasons for that Intel processors uh all that sort of stuff uh that they're kind of beholding to their Partners but I I think that some big changes may be coming to the Mac in the next three four five years especially if Apple starts going with its own in in-house chips but I don't know that there are the kind of changes that quote unquote Pro users are going to be really excited about right so so for the pro user you think that Pro users need to make their own plans and need to think about what uh what their future of computing looks like yeah I mean it's it's it's difficult to say I mean what are your options right you know roll your own Linux machine go over to Windows or something um well no you can buy a bunch of old Macs stockpile them and keep them loaded with the software that you use on them yeah but if they're they're underpowered um I think all I'm saying is I mean I know people that are are stuck on imov 6 because that was the tool that worked the best for them before they threw out what iMovie was and redid it right so you keep a machine around that runs that and um you know keep going on the tools you need and and suffer through uh uh whatever Hardware it's running on and whatever version of os 10 it's running just so you can run iMovie I mean I can't imagine that a lot of people are going to do that but this is again we're talking about a subset of a subset of computing customers right you know the Mac is what uh at best it per Market 10% of of it's always been pretty low in percentage and that's that's never mattered until you know years that's because in recent years the iPhone came out and it makes a lot more money and in many ways is the future of personal Computing all you have to do is listen to Steve Jobs comments about PCS being trucks that's just what it is that that's that's Apple's internal philosophy that was a guiding philosophy even before Steve left and it continues to be to this day they haven't abandoned the Mac they continue to put out new hardware but it's not as pro- focused it's more prosumer SLC consumer focused and for those users that really need high-end professional grade stuff uh they're just not catering to them as much anymore because they don't see a need to okay so I'm gonna framing it like this you're telling me that I need to listen to Steve Jobs who said that in 2010 we're in the post PC era and then Tim Cook who says that the iPad Pro is the future of computing and so for the pro user the expectation is that you will use an iPad Pro no I don't think so um I think uh I think that the expectation is that the iPad is going to continue to get better uh iPad Pro is obviously a branding uh thing that that Apple did um but yeah so I think that the iPad Pro is more of a branding thing than anything else um I think that uh certainly a lot of professional grade folks that are doing high-end photo editing or video editing or certainly iOS development are not going to be replacing their Mac with an iPad uh anytime soon I think that Apple would eventually like to get there but uh as we're in this kind of awkward transition phase um you you know the criticism of course that would be leveled at Apple would be you're the biggest company on the planet you have more money than you could ever know what to do with how can you not focus on uh multiple products at once why is it so difficult for Apple to uh put resources toward multiple products and and it feels like they they focus all their effort on putting one thing out and then the focus kind of shifts to another and they allocate resources accordingly and stuff like that and you know you have to assume that's part of Apple's corporate structure or something the way that they're uh laid out there the way that things are intended to be done but uh certainly can't disagree with that criticism that you know perhaps Apple should find a better way to focus on all these products and give them the attention that they deserve yeah and they've had that problem since I want to say uh gosh leopard and Snow Leopard yeah that this is you know that was the one where they got up at WWDC and said we're delaying everything um we'll release the operating system when we're getting ready right because they had to apparently allocate developers from Snow Leopard over to iOS because it was running behind schedule so yeah again where's the focus at um there's a product that makes more money is bought by more consumers um and is what Apple sees as the future of computing you know whatever skate to where the Puck's going to be you know as they say so uh I think that's why you see this shift in apple and for a long time Apple devotees uh this is a uh something that is upsetting to them but Apple runs a business so all right let's move on to our next question which is from Nick hurl in the UK and Nick writes uh Happy Happy 100th episode guys really enjoy your podcast every week my question is why are people so obsessed with high-capacity iPhones for storing photos and videos I ask this because I'm a big user of iCloud photo sharing I have the ability to save 500,000 photos and videos and also share them with my family this does not cost me any extra money nor does it eat into my iCloud storage weirdly why are users not opting for this feature I mean so Neil M you you like a big iPhone I did and I had to downgrade because I switched to a 64 gig iPhone SE because it's the largest they make uh but I had 128 gig iPhone before that and if I were buying a new one now i' would get a 256 gig um certainly Apple has done things in recent years I think mostly to quiet the critics who say that uh 16 gig um iPhone was not enough certainly they fixed that this year by getting rid of the 16 gig entry level capacity but uh there were a lot of people who couldn't even install iOS updates because it would take up too much space or require too much space to download in order to install um and so Apple made these uh changes to uh shrink photos store them in the cloud that sort of stuff um as for why somebody would want a larger capacity iPhone uh well in my case for example I don't want to have to download photos I'll go back through photos that I took you know years ago um it's much easier to find photos now with all the power that has been put into the photos app on iOS um between uh the quick browsing and thumbing over of the photos search capabilities tagging people's faces you name it I'm going back and finding old photos all the time um and the search capabilities are are very powerful and if you tap on a photo that is not saved on your phone it loads a low resolution one and then it needs to download the higher resolution one from the cloud which uses data and takes time and if you don't have a data connection like if you're on a flight or if you are on you know a train subway underground or something like that or just in a place that has poor connection or slow internet or what have you uh that becomes something of a problem as well um not to mention um if you're like me and you like to listen to music offline and for example transfer it to your Apple watch when you want to exercise you have to have it stored on your phone to do that kind of stuff to listen to it on a flight where you may not have internet connection again on Subway or something like that uh that all takes up space and so at any given time my phone has anywhere from 10 to 20 Gigabytes of music on it it has 15 to 20 Gigabytes of photos and and videos on it not to mention all the apps and stuff that you download which are getting bigger and bigger by the day um so there's a lot of reasons to have a higher capacity um phone I think that Apple has done a good job of kind of satisfying both markets the ability to keep stuff stored off your phone uh the fact that data and uh app purchases and all that are saved in the cloud so you can delete stuff and reinstall it when you need it um it's easier than ever to get by with a smaller capacity phone if you really want to uh but I think that buying a a higher capacity phone is usually a good idea because then you don't have to you just don't have to worry about that kind of stuff I I agree um I'm looking at my usage in my iPhone currently and it says that I've got 47 gig used and 13 gig of that is photos and I do allow it to use the cloud for for storage so it's doing doing the the downloading of the low resolution first or showing the low resolution first and then downloading the high resolution image but I have enough capacity on the phone that it's allowed itself to balloon that much rather than keeping it more stringently in the cloud uh Amazon Prime Instant Video ate up a bunch uh a GPS application ate up a bunch for offline maps um Twitter's chewing up some iMovies chewing up some podcasts surprisingly are chewing up about 578 Meg but uh I suspect that all of these would be a lot lean if I had the smaller gigabyte phone it forces you to and if you buy a higher capacity phone it's one thing that one less thing you have to worry about and I suppose if you're obsessive compulsive or a neat freak or whatever you might be the type to do that anyhow in which case more power to you get a lower capacity phone but what I like to do when possible is just to buy the bigger capacity and just not worry about it you know I have a terabyte of storage on Dropbox and I don't ever really have to worry about cleaning it up um and I when I downsized one of the things that I did was I moved all the movies that I had saved on my phone to Dropbox and just deleted them off my phone so they're no longer there um because I just didn't you know have the space form and they're shot in 4k now and they take up a ton of space on there uh I also download an app I think it's called uh uh I think Lively uh is or no I think that's one that turns into gifts but there's some app on there that uh goes through and finds live photos on my phone and allows me to uh turn them into not live photos so it saves the space so you cut a live photo down from like 12 15 megabytes down to like 3 four megabytes you know you got a few hundred photos like that you save some space sure and the app takes up room itself and yeah but it it it allows me to kind of cut down on on photos that take up more space and to kind of uh pinch a little bit I do it too where I'll go through because I do a lot of burst photos and thankfully all the burst photos are saved in their own folder in the photos app so then I just go through and just delete all the burst photos or just save one of them and then that frees up a lot of space as well yeah I find that I have a lot of screenshots that I've taken when I'm looking at different apps and reviewing apps and and those are saved in their own folder as well which makes easier to go back and delete them yes so the answer is that most people are are either uncomfortable with or have not yet taken advantage of the cloud storage options that Apple pushes forward and when they they do it's possible to use the lower Storage phone but if you don't have to then most people don't yeah and certainly there are a lot of people that just get the lower capacity phone because it's saves them 100 bucks or whatever and that's a perfectly fine option it really depends on what your Computing needs are especially on the go you know iPhones now are more powerful than ever before uh iMovie I'm always singing the Praises of it on on iPhone because it's fantastic I mean if you think about 10 years ago what it used to take to edit a video you'd have to shoot it essentially on on tape get some way of converting that over to a computer uh and then yeah and then uh having to edit it and then how would you export well there was certainly no YouTube to put it on um uh you know 10 or 11 years ago so uh you would have to find a place to store it or burn it onto a DVD or something you know the the capabilities now to shoot and edit and text message or post on Facebook or YouTube or whatever the videos from your phone are Beyond powerful um and and the capabilities are are very powerful and so people want more storage so they can do more of that kind of stuff I I want to point out YouTube was founded 11 years ago we're getting old you you you said 10 or 11 years ago there was no YouTube and actually there was was but uh you know you're right that it used to be a lot more of a process to deal with video you had to deal with the tape and when you uploaded footage from your your camera to your computer it took it in real time so you had to sit and play through the hours of footage that you'd shot in real time and then you know and if you were doing multiple tapes you had to change tapes and import those again in real time it was kind of laborious uh and and then go through and edit them and then you're right what are you do when you EXP well back in the old days you used DVD because you had a DVD recorder around and you could use idvd to export a DVD and that too was another task you're you're right mobile iMovie makes a big difference um the the phone really does become a a computer a personal computer that's with you everywhere you go and when it is that computer then we we use it like one and that's where the storage needs come from I want to get to our next question which I know you'll like so does the audio quality of the airpods justify the price Wireless is nice but at the end of the day sound quality matters to me says the the asker so let's uh let's look we've got our super cool airpods review that we published today uh written by Daniel Aron dger and what do you think of the airpods have you had a chance to use them yet no I haven't I'm not interested in the airpods I think they look a little goofy um and I don't um I don't trust them not to fall out of my ears and so I suppose I'm sure somebody out there makes some sort of AD adapter to clip around my ear or something um but then I can't put it in the charging case to charge it I have to take them off and you know and and I like to run outside and I just see it being a very costly disaster so it's not a product for me um okay so I'm not interested in them however uh the reviews including our own from Dan um all talk about how the sound quality is surprisingly good um the the fit is uh similar to the Earp pods but uh slightly better um and without a cable snagging around your neck they stay in your ears better and you know I've read a lot of various takes online and most people say that the the airpods stay in your ear extremely well people seem very very pleased by it there is the occasional person who couldn't get it to stay in their ear it was fumbling around everybody's got different ears Apple went for one size fits-all approach and uh uh that's their way of doing it and uh it's not going to be for everybody um it may be something you want to try before you buy or at least pop your earpods back in and see how comfortable you are with those before you buy the airpods but you know this question asked about price uh well if you compare uh other Wireless products on the market and by Wireless I mean entirely Wireless uh like the brag ey Dash and the Samsung ones and whatever else uh Apple's airpods at uh $170 are the cheapest option on the market when it comes to entirely Wireless not only that uh Apple has technology in there so each earpiece communicates directly with the phone rather than to one another is how the other ones work um so the other ones uh from what I've read are way more susceptible to dropouts because sending a wireless signal between your skull uh is kind of difficult uh sending signals through you know flesh and and watery substances gets blocked as we've talked about on this podcast before with Bluetooth reception issues and all that so it gets Amplified when you have two earpieces so Apple got around that by not having the earpieces necessarily communicate with one another but having them communicate through the phone um and that seems to make a difference from the testing you also have to factor in Apple's W1 chip which I do have experience with in using the uh Power Beats 3 and it is a rock solid connection that works fantastic uh so again you have the easier pairing associated with it uh the fact these things cost $30 less than the power beads 3 they're completely wireless they come with the battery charging in case which can recharge you know four or five times on your on your airpods which on their own get about 5 hours of charge which means that with with this charging case you'll only have to plug it in about once a week to keep using the airpods so there's a lot of advantages here and it's a pretty good product and all the reviews bear that out including our own yeah and our own has a great picture of Dan doing a headstand trying to get them to fall out and he can't get them to fall out so in terms of fit they totally pass to to answer the the the uh listener's question about sound quality it it seems to be that they're just darn very good I I know that that's hard to answer but they're you know we're going from reviews and reviews are written in words we haven't had a chance to actually hear them for our own ears um in their current design airpods sound quality does benefit from EQ settings and you can manually raise or lower their sound but this requires adjusting things from your Mac iPhone or Apple watch or alternatively using Siri so um doing a little bit of EQ with them helps and by EQ that's uh in the music app you can change to different types of music acoustic bass booster bass reducer things like that using those settings makes a difference they're uh they're they're quite good let's keep going um what do you think Neil um we have a a a couple on uh Twitter here that we got uh one from Leah mein that says uh they're looking to upgrade their iPhone 6 in early 2017 they want to know if they should go for the 7 wait for the 7s or wait for the eight uh interesting question um and I think that the the answer there is I usually say I give it like a six- months window when it comes to making recommendations to people if you're buying within six months of the launch of an iPhone you should get it um next year's iPhone situation is is going to be interesting because the expectation is that there's going to be three new iPhones there's going to be two ones that look like the seven and there's going to be a new high-end phone which will probably cost even more uh and it's going to have a all new design um I think that people are going to be really really excited for a new design iPhone because it'll have been you know over three years in the making at that point so the question I would uh ask somebody who would want to know when they should buy an iPhone is how bad do you really want a new design because if you're within that six-month window of the launch of a new iPhone I'd say buy it if you're outside of that six-month window then just wait because you're close enough you know to the next one but um yeah I would say if you're really really excited about the eight then um then for the new design then I would wait and I I would also say since we're talking about the idea of the eight you know the eight has the uh the know the eight has a uh we've had rumors about curved screens and it looks like one of the rumors is saying that that's going to be an OLED piece of glass from Samsung yes um the expectation is that Samsung is going to be the sole supplier of OLED displays for the next iPhone uh because Samsung is the only company with the capacity to do that others like Japan display are trying to ramp up capacity and that's more of an Insider thing I mean it doesn't really matter who's supplying the display for people buying a new phone but um OLED could potentially lead to battery life savings and better picture quality on the new iPhone but the capacity remains limited why which is why it's expected that OLED is only going to be featured on the allnew design quote unquote iPhone 8 or I've heard it referred to as the iPhone x because it'll be 10 years after the launch of the first iPhone so um with OED you could potentially have battery life savings because of the technology the way it works um uh it could it could uh use less power to power the screen uh the colors are brighter and more vibrant and stuff like that so expect that new high-end iPhone to have a really really really great screen one of of uh James's questions was can we interpret good things from Tim Cook's remarks about Apple's commitment to the Mac or can we speculate Apple will just slap a Mac badge on any computer and say C what about the Mac Pro and Mac Mini will desktop Mac slim down to the iMac exclusively and will the Mac get so paper thin they'll just have to go with only integrated Graphics to keep it from overheating and and he goes on you know will will 3DX Point come to the iMac in 2017 and if so only 128 gig or so to start hybrid SSD and 3DX point I I think we talked about the Mac a little bit but the reason why I read these questions is that it's clear that a lot of people are really experiencing anxiety about what's going to happen to the Mac yeah I again that goes back to to this small subset of people that really need those power user features I mean you know Macs today are more powerful than they've ever been uh but some people need that more horsepower with a dedicated graphics card and all that kind of stuff I remain hopeful that um Apple will uh use Thunderbolt 3 and USBC to increase the expandability of the um Macintosh line so uh there there are hacks that people can put together where they can plug in an external graphics card to a MacBook Pro um and get some horsepower that way there have been rumors of a uh of displays with integrated graphics cards that would you know kind of push pixels um so you could have a discrete graphics card when you're docked at home to your MacBook Pro and turn it into essentially you know workstation a very powerful computer and then on the go you have your keyboard and your screen and all that kind of stuff uh remains to be seen whether that actually happens but that's something that I would be very excited about uh as somebody who likes to have that extra horsepower when I'm sitting at a desk or whatever and don't necessarily need the portability You' invented the Mac duod do you remember that really really old one yeah yeah that was one of the ones that was on Seinfeld years ago um you know this is I I've been thinking and I wonder it years ago when you know 1997 98 when when Apple was in critical condition there were a number of people that were strongly loyal to Apple at the time because they loved their Macintosh es and what I wonder is is are people's loyalties to the Mac are people's loyalties to Apple are people's loyalties to their iPhone and you know if if Apple discontinued the Mac tomorrow what would what would happen would there be limited outrage from a limited number of people as you suggest or or is this um is there some bigger emotional attachment to the Mac that Apple either don't see or haven't taken into account because they think the emotional attachment is to I mean I think that uh I I think that both sides are true on this one you know Apple runs a business and apple also is trying to define the future of computing and and notebooks and computers and their current form factor pretty well established right you know we can have a debate over touch screens versus the touch bar and the utility of extending your arm out while using a a Surface Pro and how tiring that can be and how Apple's own user tests have found that it's not a good way of computing but you know other than that kind of stuff for the most part by and large e even stuff that is quote unquote revolutionary like the uh uh the surface uh Pro uh that that Microsoft makes that that docks with a keyboard and then detaches as a tablet but when it's docked it has a more powerful uh processor and all that kind of stuff I mean even still you're still dealing with the same general form factor of a laptop right I mean okay now you can detach a tablet and still do stuff with it but at the end of the day it's still a screen that clamshells into a keyboard you know um so I think that when Apple is is looking at that that is part of when you're talking about the future of computing and all that that's where their bias is that's what they're they're looking for is to find the next thing the big thing that's going to define the next you know 20 years of computing having played such a large part in the last 30 years of personal Computing but on the flip side for users as you say there's some sort of emotional attachment here for people that stuck by a company even through the crummy years even through you know the mid 90s when God knows what they were thinking with some of that stuff um you know the people that were there during the Resurgence you know the the the colorful IMAX that came out in the late 90s and kind of leading into the Resurgence as as Steve Jobs came back and as the company kind of got their stuff together you know there are people that feel a loyalty there because it's like it's like rooting for a sports team through all the crappy years like you know you were a Boston Red Sox fan up until you know 2004 or whatever it was and you know you went through all those crapp years and now all the bandwagoners are on there and you're upset about them showing up and selling out Fenway and all that um I I I think that uh you know there's an emotional attachment there and and certainly I don't think that the Mac is going to be discontinued anytime soon or anything dramatic like that um but it's clear that Apple's focus is elsewhere and and Apple's reasoning for doing so is is definitely sound uh but that's that's not going to make people any happier yeah and and you know I I think people are clearly anxious now let's see if if that anxiety subsides in the near future I mean to bear clear I'm I'm not you know I'm just playing devil's advocate here for myself personally um I would love to see some big changes to the Mac I really like the new Macbook Pro um and I think that you know there's a lot of potential with the USBC connector um having tested the uh the new uh 21.5 inch 4K uh LG monitor which I we published a review of last week you know I was very upset about the ditching of the mag safe uh connector but in using the 21.5 in uh 4k monitor from LG uh the ultra fine uh I I really started to see the utility and the reason that Apple decided to get rid of uh mag safe because just connecting that one cable is pretty great and it really makes for an awesome Computing experience so um you know as those accessories come to Market and as Things become available there are opportunities for um the Mac to become more than it even is um certainly what I would like to see is some sort of uh external either Wireless or wired if they have to keyboard uh with a touch bar on that um so that you could have uh all the advantages of a touch bar while using it in desktop mode as I was saying before I'd really like to be able to just dock my MacBook Pro have a graphics card and a and a external monitor connected to it keyboard and mouse sit down at a workstation get stuff done and then when I got to go on the go unplug one cable it's charged and ready to go I think that would be a really really great experience for both power users and for traditional users who don't plug it into anything I think that everybody wins in that scenario all right so tell me more about the LG uh the LG ultrafine uh there are two models uh of this that are coming out Apple has gotten out of the display business and uh they've partnered with LG to make these kind of featured devices they're not necessarily uh going to remain Apple exclusive but for right now you can only buy it at the Apple Store so a couple months ago uh the 21.5 in 4k model launched which is the one that I reviewed I should note that this last week the 27in 5K model uh has started shipping to Consumers so uh keep your eyes peeled for a review on Apple Insider in the coming weeks but for now I just tested the smaller one 21.5 in now it's not a coincidence that both of these screen sizes are the exact same screen sizes as Apple's iMac lineup they do a 21.5 in and a 27 inch um and as with the iMac uh the different size monitors offer you different features the smaller one is a little bit less powerful and a little bit less capable the larger one has a better resolution and has full ledged Thunderbolt 3 support so that's really the the the main issue that I have um with the main issues that I have I should say with the 21.5 in ultra fine 4K from LG is it doesn't use Thunderbolt 3 it uses USB C with the USB 3.1 connection and what that means is uh you plug in one cable you get the monitor you get sound all that stuff but the USB C ports on the back of the monitor only run at USB 2.0 speeds they run at a slower speed that's because the USB 3.1 protocol does not have enough bandwidth to power more p uh faster uh uh accessories and a 4K screen at the same time so they had to make that concession and the reason they made that concession is because the 12-in MacBook uh does not have a thunderbolt 3 Port it only has a USBC 3.1 Port the single port on it so so this monitor works great if you have that 12 inch and I think that it should be something to consider for the people that have the 13-inch MacBook Pro um certainly you're not going to get this the full speed and capability out of the new Macbook Pro uh but especially if you have the one without the touch bar um I think the 21.5 in is a good option I don't think that most people are going to notice the difference uh uh going to USB 2.0 speeds versus 3.1 you know unless you're doing a ton of stuff with external hard drives and all that um I think that for most users it'll be fine and it depends on your desk space too some people just can't accommodate a 27in screen it's just too big so what what are the downsides throughout this besides the the usb2 speeds what what would keep you from getting this one well what gave me paus was I was testing it with the new 13-inch MacBook Pro Touch bar and uh if you want to use it in a desktop mode and you clamshell your MacBook Pro you've just lost your touch bar it's gone uh you not only lost that but you've lost these great uh four uh uh the the uh the the speakers on it uh sound fantastic on the new Macbook Pro well you don't have those anymore either you're you're losing some of the advantages of the redesign of the MacBook Pro by by docking it and connecting it to this monitor uh and so if you're planning on using it as a dual monitor setup even then it's kind of a problem because if your eyes are going to the bigger screen um then you're not going to be looking at the screen in front of you on the MacBook which means that uh your eyes are not really in a place to be looking at the touch bar which kind of defeats some of the purpose of it it would be nice if Apple uh decided to make a magic keyboard with a touch bar on it uh I think that would solve a lot of this problem um if if you want to use this in a dual monitor setup then you have a smaller 13in and then you have a big 21.5 in and then the the 13 Ines on your desk and then 21.5 in raised up on a monitor they're not really next to each other it it makes for kind of a cumbersome experience when you're doing it as a dual monitor setup with the screen built into your MacBook so I I think that um this is a great option for anyone with the 12-in MacBook it's a great option if you have the new 13-inch MacBook Pro without touch bar uh if you get the 13-inch MacBook Pro with touch bar uh then I would ask yourself how often you're going to be using the speed of Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 and how often you're going to be using the touch bar itself and how often you're going to be using Touch ID uh to log in as well because you're not going to get those features while it's clam shell um if you have the 15-inch MacBook Pro then I would not recommend this because the 15-inch MacBook Pro has its own dedicated graphics card and the jump up from 15 to 21.5 in is not as significant as it would be from 15 to 27 inches so if you get the 27inch model it has it does Thunderbolt 3 instead of USB 3 which makes it not compatible with the 12 point with the 12-in MacBook Pro uh it no no 12-in MacBook MacBook thank you yes too much jargon here um so the 15-inch MacBook Pro will connect over to Thunderbolt 3 and it has full speed USB 3.1 ports through USBC on the back of it so all of your USB accessories connected to the back of the 27in model will run at full speed they won't have any slowdown and it's a higher resolution 5K monitor so with the dedicated graphics card and the larger screen on the 15in I think you have to go to the 27in model to justify the purchase I think that for tweeners on the 13-in MacBook Pro depends on your usage case uh but the screen is gorgeous and the ability to connect just one cable and have that do sound and data and video and power and all of that uh is awesome uh you just sit down at your desk plug in one cable bam you're good to go everything just starts working there there isn't even a power button on the monitor there aren't even any controls on the monitor it's as simple as you could get uh dead simple and the power just comes through the monitor which is then plugged into your wall you only need that one cable and then you can keep your power adapter and USBC cable and your backpack or whatever for when you're on the go all right so what does it cost what do I have to pay out to get this thing so Apple um has been doing a discount on uh USBC accessories because of user complaints um uh with the switch to USBC so right now you can get the uh 21.5 in LG ultra fine for $524 the price is going to go up uh as of March 31st to 699 it was originally going to be January 1st of uh of 2017 but they pushed the deadline back so for $524 you get a gorgeous 4K 21.5 in screen uh it's a pretty good deal um and I think that uh if you're in the market for that size of a screen and you don't mind the concessions I think you'll be very happy with it the 27in model that just started shipping um is currently $974 when it goes up as of March 31st to its full price it'll be uh $1299.95 so good time to buy if you're on the market for these monitors they're competitively priced right now uh the 27 in has some other features that you don't get like a built-in camera and all that um and I think that that's a a pretty good option for a lot of folks too especially if you got a 15-inch MacBook Pro if you have an older Mac though don't bother you're going to be in dongle hell you're going to need adapters to plug in your Mac Pro or whatever um it's it's probably not worth it and I would you know this goes back to talking about whether Apple caters to Pro users or whatever uh keep your fingers crossed I guess that they'll do a Mac Pro update but I I don't know what to tell you I I I couldn't recommend buying one of these monitors and plugging with a bunch of dongles and stuff you're better off just getting another brand monitor diminishing returns right you you you get it you have to get all these adapters and then you wouldn't even be able to take advantage of of all its capabilities right yeah what makes these monitors great is the Simplicity of it and you've defeated the Simplicity of it if you need to go through adapter hell you know for folks that have a new Macbook Pro and they're trying to connect old monitors and they're trying to save some money okay that makes sense but if you've got an old Mac Pro and you're trying to connect this new monitor to it I think you're going to I think you're going to be unhappy right I want to take a moment and talk again about some deals we've got for you this time around I'm going to mention that we've got the 32 gig Apple TV for $109 magic keyboard for $77 Magic Mouse 2 For $52 and the magic track two for $96 so certainly there's mice keyboards and trackpads available at really good deals I also want to mention that the 64 gig Apple TV is available for $149 which is $50 off its list price and no sales tax outside New York and New Jersey so this is again through our good partners Adorama and if you go through our our website through a link that'll be in the show notes you can go and use the uh promo code AP Insider and take advantage of these deals Neil what what do you think we've got Paul Bruto asking a question about Apple's move into augmented reality as the next big thing and he's not talking about holding up the phone as much as you know holding up the phone to your face or or doing something like that as much as true augmented reality as he says with with some of the contact lenses and things like that real face recognition uh Apple watches sharing info with each other what what do you think about this kind of thing uh there's a lot of potential there um and I think it's pretty exciting and you can see some of the groundwork being with you know dual camera lenses on the iPhone 7 and some of the patents that Apple has shown interest in and uh particularly when it comes to mapping and finding locations and stuff like that um we haven't really seen Apple make a push into augmented reality um but they have admitted publicly which is strange uh for a secretive company that they're interested in it um I I think that uh what you'll see from Apple is maybe not necessarily augmented reality Hardware uh because I don't think that the technology is yet to make it something that is Sleek and attractive and uh uh that most people would want to wear um this is a lot of the issues that they were running into with the Apple watch which how do you make something fashionable and attractive that that people would want to wear well it's the glucal glass issue right right you look like a total geek um now of course you kind of look like a geek wearing airpods so what do I know but um I I think that uh you know something on your wrist uh solid piece of whatever is is easier to uh get away with uh being a little geeky as opposed to something on your face where people are looking at you when they speak to you uh then it becomes a little bit more difficult so you could look at the Snapchat approach where they have these like kind of oversized glasses and they're kind of embracing the geekiness and weirdness of it um versus Google trying to be like Sleek or whatever but it just didn't come off it just kind of made you look like a loser I think that uh when when you think about Apple and augmented reality you kind of have to throw your conventions of what augmented reality is going to be 15 20 years from now and think a little bit more shorter term and realistic in terms of uh uh what you can do with current technology we're not at a point right now where you can have traditional glasses that somebody would wear and embed all the technology in there and have them just look like normal glasses we just don't have that technology right now so you could think about applications just where you would maybe hold your phone up or look at stuff on it um and have augmented reality work that way um one of the ideas that's been put out there is that perhaps Apple will get into the virtual and real augmented reality Space by folding it into the made for iPhone program so in the same way that you can make accessories for iPhone or you can make you know game controllers or you know homekit things or whatever uh there will be a licensing program of you know made for apple arvr and it could be headsets that you plug on your head if you want to wear those it could be apps that uh allow you to interact with the world around you just by holding up your phone and looking at it um it could be things that use the dual camera setup on the iPhone 7 plus uh there's a lot of groundwork laid there for potential you know using the gyus Scopes and GPS accelerometer data and all that in your iPhone uh you could easily see where Apple could create a platform to allow people to do those sorts of things but I don't see them necessarily in the short term making a wearable device in the vein of the Apple watch for augmented reality because I don't think the Technologies there and I think it would be a failure yeah well first of all no one really wants to wear anything on their faces right and and you know contact lenses for people who don't need to wear contact lenses is also not a thing right right unless unless you're changing your eye color through colored contact lenses for some reason no one does this so but could you sell people on it if you could pack that technology into a contact lens maybe I mean but i' beant you know we're talking about we're talking about battery life we're talking about size technology forget about those things the question is what's the experience that you deliver right who whose problem are you solving and what is the job to be done right is is the job helping someone who's a technician be able to maintain or or construct whatever they're working on better because they have a diagram that's overlaid on top of their reality so they can see exactly what it should look like when they're finished or or is it about you know helping jog your memory when you're introduced to someone is it about you know what are the kinds of applications well I think the applications for augmented reality are Limitless I mean you think about how excited people were with a blank canvas of a screen on a phone or a tablet where it could turn into anything you wanted with buttons wherever you needed what have you yeah but it took us a while to figure out how to use that thing the the early early applications many of them were Recreations of applications from Palm Os or Windows CE right we had to learn what to do with this thing but when Once the app store opened yes there were a lot of failures and a lot of things that weren't uh particularly good uh but it it was the Limitless potential that that people saw that made the App Store so successful and so exciting and continues to be to this day right so take all of that blank canvas concept and apply it to the world around you and the the possibilities if the technology Works become Limitless right you could um you know uh Envision uh just think about like for example decorating a home uh pieces of furniture seeing how they would fit how they would look uh painting your walls wallpaper uh you know changing the color of things what whatever you want to do you could do entire interior design design just by having an application that would give you the ability to do that sort of thing and the technology is there currently to do it it's just not in a wearable form right there's certainly apps that you can do that with on your iPhone but imagine if you were there and could almost you know see it uh with your own eyes essentially uh trying on clothes you know imagine if there was an application where you could go to an online store and you never know how this stuff's going to fit right you just never know how it's going to fit well it has a body scan of you you stand in front of a mirror you wear these glasses and now you look and you see how the shirt's going to look on you that kind of stuff I mean there there's possibility educational yeah and that's that's actually something Levis used to do years ago Levis used to have in their physical retail stores a body scanner where you'd step in it would scan you and then place an order for custommade jeans that would actually fit exactly uh and and you talked about remembering people you know you see them it recognizes their face it goes oh that's Joe you know you know them from here it gives you little things that you can quickly access without having to pull out a phone or look or check something you know uh uh all kinds of applications think about for like educational purposes is if you were to visit uh uh ruins of a city or something you could have it be virtually brought back to life in front of you you could see what it was like I mean it's so exciting and there's so much potential for augmented reality that uh any company that is into technology and advancing it would be interested in augmented reality I mean the potential is Limitless and we haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to things like games and all that so I think that you know obviously it makes sense for Apple to be looking to augmented reality obviously uh they see something there because I think anybody who has the foresight to see what technology is capable of can see the Limitless potential of augmented reality the form that it takes is the question how do you get to that place where it's a contact lens or you know if you want to go Black Mirror on this a chip implanted in the back of your head or something like that you know how do we get to that point where it becomes a seamless experience where um you are not looking like a total dork for using it that's a very good question I don't hate the answers yet you want to move on to another question uh we have another one on Twitter here from Darren Maine and he wants to know is it worth the upgrade from The Watch series one to series two uh I don't want to correct you Darren because perhaps you worded the question properly but um uh my assumption here is that you're thinking of the first generation Apple watch and uh this gives me an opportunity to kind of as opposed to the confusingly named series one yeah so what happened was when the new Apple watch came out this fall Apple launched three new models um basically I mean if you want to get into you know the camic they launched two and a half new models well the ceramic one if you wanted to count that as its own model I suppose uh the the the new edition which is not you know I'm counting series one as a half new model fair enough um but then there's also the Apple watch sport uh or I'm sorry the nikee Apple watch so here's your lineup Apple watch first generation launched in April of 2015 is no more it is not being sold by Apple if you can find it at the store it's heavily discounted it's a it's a essentially a dead product that doesn't mean that um just destroyed the resale value of my new inbox first person it does not mean that you should be unhappy with your first generation Apple watch it just means that Apple realized the processor was too slow and they moved on so they released two different variants this here they have the series one watch which has a faster dual core processor um essentially the same chip that's in the series 2 watch it just lacks GPS and it lacks the waterproofing uh I thought it was a wait a minute correct me because I thought it was a single core version of the same board that's in series 2 I believe it's a dual core chip all right carry on let me look and check I don't have the series one watch but the reason I say all this is because I believe that this question being asked by Darren he's referring to the first gener last year's watch because a lot of people think that the series one is they just discounted the price of last year's model but they did not it's a new board so if you read it's a s1p it's a dual core processor but it's not the S2 it's a new variant of the S1 called the s1p that's a dual core processor I see that and then the S2 who knows what the difference is I guess they're faster but you know with with this weird branding that Apple does that's just the way it is uh the series 2 has built-in GPS and it's water resistant uh 50 m the brand new series 1 is not water resistant it is Splash resistant so you could shower with it but you wouldn't want to swim with it basically right other than that the watches are uh large of the same the um second generation one has a twice as bright screen uh the series 2 versus the series 1 um and then when you get in the rest of the lineup they have the same internal Hardware as the series 2 so the Nike Apple watch has a uh S2 processor waterproof uh GPS all that um and then the high-end uh uh stainless steel and ceramic Edition versions uh have the same uh screen and and uh processing power and all that kind of stuff so if you have a series one should you get a series two no if you have a first generation should you get a series two maybe if you're an outdoor Runner I think so yeah and if you're not an outdoor Runner or a swimmer don't bother wait for next Generation The Watch os3 upgrade uh makes a huge difference in performance and you're not going to notice that big of a difference uh switching to the series 2 it certainly is faster but it's not worth your $400 to get it faster okay good answer all right well let's go to our next question uh Dan rer wanted some info about vpns and popup blockers actually okay um what do you know about popup blockers um I don't really have a lot of problems with popups uh per se um and I'm I'm I don't support ad blockers um we've talked about this before just because I run a website and we make our money from free content with ads on it so uh you know I I would hope that folks would consider allowing ads when they go to Apple Insider wrong person to ask that's the uh that's the um how we make money but uh and how I pay my bills but um when it comes to VPN I I did mention it on the podcast last week and I'll mention it again um I tried out an app while I was in Mexico so I could use HBO GO or HBO now whichever it is called tunnel bear and uh was extremely pleased uh very simple UI uh transparent pricing very fair it was $4 for unlimited data for a month um super easy to use um I really was happy with it so uh if you want to try VPN uh on your iPhone or iPad um the experience was uh fantastic you just tapped what country you wanted to appear that you were coming from it uh would automatically uh enable the VPN settings on iOS and you were good to go and I could stream the content and I was extremely happy with it so tunnel bear comes highly recommended if you have any pop-up blockers or ad blockers you can recommend Victor that would let you decide on that uh so tunnel bear is a very popular one and it has been for years I I've also used private internet access which is a VPN service and works on iPhone and on Mac and uh nordvpn is another one that I'm trying out the the question that you need to ask yourself is what you're using a VP for and what you hope to get out of it are you trying to obate traffic from uh your your local connection and local provider are you trying to to make sure that your data as you go across the Internet isn't logged what what what are you trying to really do are you trying to prevent yourself from being exposed at a coffee shop kind of thing where people can sniff your your data that way um it it depends on the threat model and you know if your threat model is you're trying to avoid being hacked by three-letter government agencies determined to get it you I have no advice whatsoever because I just don't know how to do that and I don't know how to make a good recommendation but if if you're trying to increase your privacy and increase your security of data through encrypting your traffic using a VPN as a decent answer finding a VPN provider that has a policy of keeping zero logs is a good idea um how you decide that you can trust them for having a zero logs policy is another question and that's another one that I don't have a good answer to but for example both nordvpn and and private internet access VPN both say or Pia VPN both say that they have zero logs policies so uh that's where I would uh begin looking and I really don't have good information about pop-up blockers because popup aren't a problem I've experienced in a few years uh for whatever reason the sites that I go to don't really have popups the uh the the using just Safari as it ships from Apple I haven't had that as a big issue I've had a few times where it's been an annoyance and in that case I force quit Safari and and reopen and don't open the windows that cause those problems I I'm sorry that's not a better answer well Neil on that note let's have a resounding end to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you on the internet uh you can read my stuff on appleinsider.com and you can follow me on Twitter at this is Neil NE L and I'm your host Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter and this has been the Apple Insider podcast and if Neil decides that he wants to upgrade from a series 1 watch to a series 3 watch we'll tell you all about it sometime in the future on the Apple Insider podcast thank you very much everybody and please feel free to leave reviews on iTunes we hope they're positive ones but we totally understand if you aren't we read all the comments we read all the reviews we really care about what you guys think and we hope that you enjoy listening so please feel free to reviews and we'll see you next weekyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where we discuss all things Apple Mac iPhone iPad and more with me is editor and chief Neil Hughes hey Victor how's it going excellent how are you doing doing well settling into the new apartment I guess takes some time you know yeah well you fully kitted that thing out with with tons of Philip Hub bulbs and and things like that so I I think it ought to be great I'd love to see it someday yeah yeah it's uh it's nice to have everything kind of controlled by voice it's coming together slowly but uh yeah and that my friends is how you invite yourself to Neil's house we've got a ton of questions from our our listeners and readers and before we get to that I want to go over one of our uh our offers for all of our listeners so we've got some killer deals you can save $130 to $350 instantly on Apple's new touch bar MacBook Pros with Apple Care plus no tax in 48 states so this is a first come first served offer apple and cider readers can use exclusive coupons this week to instantly save between 130 to 350 on pre-orders for every possible configuration of Apple's new late 2016 MacBook Pros bundled with Apple Care uh this is through our friends at Adorama and we will have the link on our website come through our Apple price guide and use the promo code AP Insider and and Adorama will be happy to sell you one of these with the instant savings and also not collect sales tax on orders shipped outside of New York and New Jersey we'll go ahead and have that in the show notes and we'll get right into the show now so Neil one of the questions that we had was what are Apple's plans for the pro user and and I know that you don't exactly know Apple's plans at least not down to the detail but we we had an article that Roger wrote about this about how there a lot of people really concerned that apple is losing focus on the Mac that that uh there is no dedicated Mac team that there is no Mac Pro that that the Mac feels like an afterthought to iOS well to be clear there there is a dedicated Mac team uh the Mac is not dead uh but the focus is very much so on the iPhone uh that's just kind of the way things are that's where the money's at and that's what consumers are buying and and anybody who doesn't realize that has been paying attention uh this was a story that came out through Bloomberg this week and it was clear that Apple kind of wanted to get the jump on it because a few days before a memo from Tim Cook to an internal Apple employee or two internal employees leaked out conveniently uh saying that uh Apple saw a bright future for its uh its Mac desktops and that it had plenty of stuff in the pipeline but the comment great desktops are coming right right but the the way that the quote was worded led a number of people people myself included to believe that uh Apple sees the future of the desktop in the iMac and uh would seem to suggest that the Mac Pro which hasn't now been updated in I guess three years it was end of 2013 that the new design launched um it's kind of a niche product in what is already a niche subset of computing uh the Mac uh and it would seem that apple is not particularly focused on the Mac Pro and that is upsetting to a lot of users that uh want or Developers you know filmmakers whatever that want high-end machines but um I would have to say that you know from whatever the the numbers that Apple has internally whatever their justification for it is at the end of the day they're business and they're going to do what it takes to make money and to stay in business and most of the focus is on the iPhone and that's just the way it is so I I was reading in my Twitter feed this morning uh someone that I follow said that the the Mac is on maintenance mode and that the Mac is essentially existing as developer machine to build iOS apps I mean it's hard to disagree with that it's hard to disagree with that um you can see the level of innovation that's taking place in the Mac is uh not particularly high as compared to how it's been before um you know you have new thinner designs you have a switch to USBC ports you have better retina displays you have the touch bar um I really like current Macs I like the MacBook Pro but there's certainly a sense of when you see things like the uh what do they call that surface uh iMac ripoff the the one that the the Microsoft Surface that is the uh the the W kind of style thing right it it folds down into a desktop that you draw on yeah and I mean we're talking about Niche devices and that's certainly another one where not a lot of people are that are going to be doing traditional Computing are going to see a need for that device however uh it is generating Buzz for Microsoft I think it's easier for Microsoft to focus on products like that because they already lost the mobile race anyhow I mean you know apple is making money hand over fist from the iPhone the iPhone accounts for 60 70 some odd percent of its Revenue um and even the iPad is bigger than the Mac uh in terms of unit sales for sure um and revenue from the iPad is going back up now that the Pro Models are out so you know you you look at those uh options that are out there on the table right now and the Mac Pro is not something that's been getting focused and the MacBook Pro took a while to get updated and there's a lot of reasons for that Intel processors uh all that sort of stuff uh that they're kind of beholding to their Partners but I I think that some big changes may be coming to the Mac in the next three four five years especially if Apple starts going with its own in in-house chips but I don't know that there are the kind of changes that quote unquote Pro users are going to be really excited about right so so for the pro user you think that Pro users need to make their own plans and need to think about what uh what their future of computing looks like yeah I mean it's it's it's difficult to say I mean what are your options right you know roll your own Linux machine go over to Windows or something um well no you can buy a bunch of old Macs stockpile them and keep them loaded with the software that you use on them yeah but if they're they're underpowered um I think all I'm saying is I mean I know people that are are stuck on imov 6 because that was the tool that worked the best for them before they threw out what iMovie was and redid it right so you keep a machine around that runs that and um you know keep going on the tools you need and and suffer through uh uh whatever Hardware it's running on and whatever version of os 10 it's running just so you can run iMovie I mean I can't imagine that a lot of people are going to do that but this is again we're talking about a subset of a subset of computing customers right you know the Mac is what uh at best it per Market 10% of of it's always been pretty low in percentage and that's that's never mattered until you know years that's because in recent years the iPhone came out and it makes a lot more money and in many ways is the future of personal Computing all you have to do is listen to Steve Jobs comments about PCS being trucks that's just what it is that that's that's Apple's internal philosophy that was a guiding philosophy even before Steve left and it continues to be to this day they haven't abandoned the Mac they continue to put out new hardware but it's not as pro- focused it's more prosumer SLC consumer focused and for those users that really need high-end professional grade stuff uh they're just not catering to them as much anymore because they don't see a need to okay so I'm gonna framing it like this you're telling me that I need to listen to Steve Jobs who said that in 2010 we're in the post PC era and then Tim Cook who says that the iPad Pro is the future of computing and so for the pro user the expectation is that you will use an iPad Pro no I don't think so um I think uh I think that the expectation is that the iPad is going to continue to get better uh iPad Pro is obviously a branding uh thing that that Apple did um but yeah so I think that the iPad Pro is more of a branding thing than anything else um I think that uh certainly a lot of professional grade folks that are doing high-end photo editing or video editing or certainly iOS development are not going to be replacing their Mac with an iPad uh anytime soon I think that Apple would eventually like to get there but uh as we're in this kind of awkward transition phase um you you know the criticism of course that would be leveled at Apple would be you're the biggest company on the planet you have more money than you could ever know what to do with how can you not focus on uh multiple products at once why is it so difficult for Apple to uh put resources toward multiple products and and it feels like they they focus all their effort on putting one thing out and then the focus kind of shifts to another and they allocate resources accordingly and stuff like that and you know you have to assume that's part of Apple's corporate structure or something the way that they're uh laid out there the way that things are intended to be done but uh certainly can't disagree with that criticism that you know perhaps Apple should find a better way to focus on all these products and give them the attention that they deserve yeah and they've had that problem since I want to say uh gosh leopard and Snow Leopard yeah that this is you know that was the one where they got up at WWDC and said we're delaying everything um we'll release the operating system when we're getting ready right because they had to apparently allocate developers from Snow Leopard over to iOS because it was running behind schedule so yeah again where's the focus at um there's a product that makes more money is bought by more consumers um and is what Apple sees as the future of computing you know whatever skate to where the Puck's going to be you know as they say so uh I think that's why you see this shift in apple and for a long time Apple devotees uh this is a uh something that is upsetting to them but Apple runs a business so all right let's move on to our next question which is from Nick hurl in the UK and Nick writes uh Happy Happy 100th episode guys really enjoy your podcast every week my question is why are people so obsessed with high-capacity iPhones for storing photos and videos I ask this because I'm a big user of iCloud photo sharing I have the ability to save 500,000 photos and videos and also share them with my family this does not cost me any extra money nor does it eat into my iCloud storage weirdly why are users not opting for this feature I mean so Neil M you you like a big iPhone I did and I had to downgrade because I switched to a 64 gig iPhone SE because it's the largest they make uh but I had 128 gig iPhone before that and if I were buying a new one now i' would get a 256 gig um certainly Apple has done things in recent years I think mostly to quiet the critics who say that uh 16 gig um iPhone was not enough certainly they fixed that this year by getting rid of the 16 gig entry level capacity but uh there were a lot of people who couldn't even install iOS updates because it would take up too much space or require too much space to download in order to install um and so Apple made these uh changes to uh shrink photos store them in the cloud that sort of stuff um as for why somebody would want a larger capacity iPhone uh well in my case for example I don't want to have to download photos I'll go back through photos that I took you know years ago um it's much easier to find photos now with all the power that has been put into the photos app on iOS um between uh the quick browsing and thumbing over of the photos search capabilities tagging people's faces you name it I'm going back and finding old photos all the time um and the search capabilities are are very powerful and if you tap on a photo that is not saved on your phone it loads a low resolution one and then it needs to download the higher resolution one from the cloud which uses data and takes time and if you don't have a data connection like if you're on a flight or if you are on you know a train subway underground or something like that or just in a place that has poor connection or slow internet or what have you uh that becomes something of a problem as well um not to mention um if you're like me and you like to listen to music offline and for example transfer it to your Apple watch when you want to exercise you have to have it stored on your phone to do that kind of stuff to listen to it on a flight where you may not have internet connection again on Subway or something like that uh that all takes up space and so at any given time my phone has anywhere from 10 to 20 Gigabytes of music on it it has 15 to 20 Gigabytes of photos and and videos on it not to mention all the apps and stuff that you download which are getting bigger and bigger by the day um so there's a lot of reasons to have a higher capacity um phone I think that Apple has done a good job of kind of satisfying both markets the ability to keep stuff stored off your phone uh the fact that data and uh app purchases and all that are saved in the cloud so you can delete stuff and reinstall it when you need it um it's easier than ever to get by with a smaller capacity phone if you really want to uh but I think that buying a a higher capacity phone is usually a good idea because then you don't have to you just don't have to worry about that kind of stuff I I agree um I'm looking at my usage in my iPhone currently and it says that I've got 47 gig used and 13 gig of that is photos and I do allow it to use the cloud for for storage so it's doing doing the the downloading of the low resolution first or showing the low resolution first and then downloading the high resolution image but I have enough capacity on the phone that it's allowed itself to balloon that much rather than keeping it more stringently in the cloud uh Amazon Prime Instant Video ate up a bunch uh a GPS application ate up a bunch for offline maps um Twitter's chewing up some iMovies chewing up some podcasts surprisingly are chewing up about 578 Meg but uh I suspect that all of these would be a lot lean if I had the smaller gigabyte phone it forces you to and if you buy a higher capacity phone it's one thing that one less thing you have to worry about and I suppose if you're obsessive compulsive or a neat freak or whatever you might be the type to do that anyhow in which case more power to you get a lower capacity phone but what I like to do when possible is just to buy the bigger capacity and just not worry about it you know I have a terabyte of storage on Dropbox and I don't ever really have to worry about cleaning it up um and I when I downsized one of the things that I did was I moved all the movies that I had saved on my phone to Dropbox and just deleted them off my phone so they're no longer there um because I just didn't you know have the space form and they're shot in 4k now and they take up a ton of space on there uh I also download an app I think it's called uh uh I think Lively uh is or no I think that's one that turns into gifts but there's some app on there that uh goes through and finds live photos on my phone and allows me to uh turn them into not live photos so it saves the space so you cut a live photo down from like 12 15 megabytes down to like 3 four megabytes you know you got a few hundred photos like that you save some space sure and the app takes up room itself and yeah but it it it allows me to kind of cut down on on photos that take up more space and to kind of uh pinch a little bit I do it too where I'll go through because I do a lot of burst photos and thankfully all the burst photos are saved in their own folder in the photos app so then I just go through and just delete all the burst photos or just save one of them and then that frees up a lot of space as well yeah I find that I have a lot of screenshots that I've taken when I'm looking at different apps and reviewing apps and and those are saved in their own folder as well which makes easier to go back and delete them yes so the answer is that most people are are either uncomfortable with or have not yet taken advantage of the cloud storage options that Apple pushes forward and when they they do it's possible to use the lower Storage phone but if you don't have to then most people don't yeah and certainly there are a lot of people that just get the lower capacity phone because it's saves them 100 bucks or whatever and that's a perfectly fine option it really depends on what your Computing needs are especially on the go you know iPhones now are more powerful than ever before uh iMovie I'm always singing the Praises of it on on iPhone because it's fantastic I mean if you think about 10 years ago what it used to take to edit a video you'd have to shoot it essentially on on tape get some way of converting that over to a computer uh and then yeah and then uh having to edit it and then how would you export well there was certainly no YouTube to put it on um uh you know 10 or 11 years ago so uh you would have to find a place to store it or burn it onto a DVD or something you know the the capabilities now to shoot and edit and text message or post on Facebook or YouTube or whatever the videos from your phone are Beyond powerful um and and the capabilities are are very powerful and so people want more storage so they can do more of that kind of stuff I I want to point out YouTube was founded 11 years ago we're getting old you you you said 10 or 11 years ago there was no YouTube and actually there was was but uh you know you're right that it used to be a lot more of a process to deal with video you had to deal with the tape and when you uploaded footage from your your camera to your computer it took it in real time so you had to sit and play through the hours of footage that you'd shot in real time and then you know and if you were doing multiple tapes you had to change tapes and import those again in real time it was kind of laborious uh and and then go through and edit them and then you're right what are you do when you EXP well back in the old days you used DVD because you had a DVD recorder around and you could use idvd to export a DVD and that too was another task you're you're right mobile iMovie makes a big difference um the the phone really does become a a computer a personal computer that's with you everywhere you go and when it is that computer then we we use it like one and that's where the storage needs come from I want to get to our next question which I know you'll like so does the audio quality of the airpods justify the price Wireless is nice but at the end of the day sound quality matters to me says the the asker so let's uh let's look we've got our super cool airpods review that we published today uh written by Daniel Aron dger and what do you think of the airpods have you had a chance to use them yet no I haven't I'm not interested in the airpods I think they look a little goofy um and I don't um I don't trust them not to fall out of my ears and so I suppose I'm sure somebody out there makes some sort of AD adapter to clip around my ear or something um but then I can't put it in the charging case to charge it I have to take them off and you know and and I like to run outside and I just see it being a very costly disaster so it's not a product for me um okay so I'm not interested in them however uh the reviews including our own from Dan um all talk about how the sound quality is surprisingly good um the the fit is uh similar to the Earp pods but uh slightly better um and without a cable snagging around your neck they stay in your ears better and you know I've read a lot of various takes online and most people say that the the airpods stay in your ear extremely well people seem very very pleased by it there is the occasional person who couldn't get it to stay in their ear it was fumbling around everybody's got different ears Apple went for one size fits-all approach and uh uh that's their way of doing it and uh it's not going to be for everybody um it may be something you want to try before you buy or at least pop your earpods back in and see how comfortable you are with those before you buy the airpods but you know this question asked about price uh well if you compare uh other Wireless products on the market and by Wireless I mean entirely Wireless uh like the brag ey Dash and the Samsung ones and whatever else uh Apple's airpods at uh $170 are the cheapest option on the market when it comes to entirely Wireless not only that uh Apple has technology in there so each earpiece communicates directly with the phone rather than to one another is how the other ones work um so the other ones uh from what I've read are way more susceptible to dropouts because sending a wireless signal between your skull uh is kind of difficult uh sending signals through you know flesh and and watery substances gets blocked as we've talked about on this podcast before with Bluetooth reception issues and all that so it gets Amplified when you have two earpieces so Apple got around that by not having the earpieces necessarily communicate with one another but having them communicate through the phone um and that seems to make a difference from the testing you also have to factor in Apple's W1 chip which I do have experience with in using the uh Power Beats 3 and it is a rock solid connection that works fantastic uh so again you have the easier pairing associated with it uh the fact these things cost $30 less than the power beads 3 they're completely wireless they come with the battery charging in case which can recharge you know four or five times on your on your airpods which on their own get about 5 hours of charge which means that with with this charging case you'll only have to plug it in about once a week to keep using the airpods so there's a lot of advantages here and it's a pretty good product and all the reviews bear that out including our own yeah and our own has a great picture of Dan doing a headstand trying to get them to fall out and he can't get them to fall out so in terms of fit they totally pass to to answer the the the uh listener's question about sound quality it it seems to be that they're just darn very good I I know that that's hard to answer but they're you know we're going from reviews and reviews are written in words we haven't had a chance to actually hear them for our own ears um in their current design airpods sound quality does benefit from EQ settings and you can manually raise or lower their sound but this requires adjusting things from your Mac iPhone or Apple watch or alternatively using Siri so um doing a little bit of EQ with them helps and by EQ that's uh in the music app you can change to different types of music acoustic bass booster bass reducer things like that using those settings makes a difference they're uh they're they're quite good let's keep going um what do you think Neil um we have a a a couple on uh Twitter here that we got uh one from Leah mein that says uh they're looking to upgrade their iPhone 6 in early 2017 they want to know if they should go for the 7 wait for the 7s or wait for the eight uh interesting question um and I think that the the answer there is I usually say I give it like a six- months window when it comes to making recommendations to people if you're buying within six months of the launch of an iPhone you should get it um next year's iPhone situation is is going to be interesting because the expectation is that there's going to be three new iPhones there's going to be two ones that look like the seven and there's going to be a new high-end phone which will probably cost even more uh and it's going to have a all new design um I think that people are going to be really really excited for a new design iPhone because it'll have been you know over three years in the making at that point so the question I would uh ask somebody who would want to know when they should buy an iPhone is how bad do you really want a new design because if you're within that six-month window of the launch of a new iPhone I'd say buy it if you're outside of that six-month window then just wait because you're close enough you know to the next one but um yeah I would say if you're really really excited about the eight then um then for the new design then I would wait and I I would also say since we're talking about the idea of the eight you know the eight has the uh the know the eight has a uh we've had rumors about curved screens and it looks like one of the rumors is saying that that's going to be an OLED piece of glass from Samsung yes um the expectation is that Samsung is going to be the sole supplier of OLED displays for the next iPhone uh because Samsung is the only company with the capacity to do that others like Japan display are trying to ramp up capacity and that's more of an Insider thing I mean it doesn't really matter who's supplying the display for people buying a new phone but um OLED could potentially lead to battery life savings and better picture quality on the new iPhone but the capacity remains limited why which is why it's expected that OLED is only going to be featured on the allnew design quote unquote iPhone 8 or I've heard it referred to as the iPhone x because it'll be 10 years after the launch of the first iPhone so um with OED you could potentially have battery life savings because of the technology the way it works um uh it could it could uh use less power to power the screen uh the colors are brighter and more vibrant and stuff like that so expect that new high-end iPhone to have a really really really great screen one of of uh James's questions was can we interpret good things from Tim Cook's remarks about Apple's commitment to the Mac or can we speculate Apple will just slap a Mac badge on any computer and say C what about the Mac Pro and Mac Mini will desktop Mac slim down to the iMac exclusively and will the Mac get so paper thin they'll just have to go with only integrated Graphics to keep it from overheating and and he goes on you know will will 3DX Point come to the iMac in 2017 and if so only 128 gig or so to start hybrid SSD and 3DX point I I think we talked about the Mac a little bit but the reason why I read these questions is that it's clear that a lot of people are really experiencing anxiety about what's going to happen to the Mac yeah I again that goes back to to this small subset of people that really need those power user features I mean you know Macs today are more powerful than they've ever been uh but some people need that more horsepower with a dedicated graphics card and all that kind of stuff I remain hopeful that um Apple will uh use Thunderbolt 3 and USBC to increase the expandability of the um Macintosh line so uh there there are hacks that people can put together where they can plug in an external graphics card to a MacBook Pro um and get some horsepower that way there have been rumors of a uh of displays with integrated graphics cards that would you know kind of push pixels um so you could have a discrete graphics card when you're docked at home to your MacBook Pro and turn it into essentially you know workstation a very powerful computer and then on the go you have your keyboard and your screen and all that kind of stuff uh remains to be seen whether that actually happens but that's something that I would be very excited about uh as somebody who likes to have that extra horsepower when I'm sitting at a desk or whatever and don't necessarily need the portability You' invented the Mac duod do you remember that really really old one yeah yeah that was one of the ones that was on Seinfeld years ago um you know this is I I've been thinking and I wonder it years ago when you know 1997 98 when when Apple was in critical condition there were a number of people that were strongly loyal to Apple at the time because they loved their Macintosh es and what I wonder is is are people's loyalties to the Mac are people's loyalties to Apple are people's loyalties to their iPhone and you know if if Apple discontinued the Mac tomorrow what would what would happen would there be limited outrage from a limited number of people as you suggest or or is this um is there some bigger emotional attachment to the Mac that Apple either don't see or haven't taken into account because they think the emotional attachment is to I mean I think that uh I I think that both sides are true on this one you know Apple runs a business and apple also is trying to define the future of computing and and notebooks and computers and their current form factor pretty well established right you know we can have a debate over touch screens versus the touch bar and the utility of extending your arm out while using a a Surface Pro and how tiring that can be and how Apple's own user tests have found that it's not a good way of computing but you know other than that kind of stuff for the most part by and large e even stuff that is quote unquote revolutionary like the uh uh the surface uh Pro uh that that Microsoft makes that that docks with a keyboard and then detaches as a tablet but when it's docked it has a more powerful uh processor and all that kind of stuff I mean even still you're still dealing with the same general form factor of a laptop right I mean okay now you can detach a tablet and still do stuff with it but at the end of the day it's still a screen that clamshells into a keyboard you know um so I think that when Apple is is looking at that that is part of when you're talking about the future of computing and all that that's where their bias is that's what they're they're looking for is to find the next thing the big thing that's going to define the next you know 20 years of computing having played such a large part in the last 30 years of personal Computing but on the flip side for users as you say there's some sort of emotional attachment here for people that stuck by a company even through the crummy years even through you know the mid 90s when God knows what they were thinking with some of that stuff um you know the people that were there during the Resurgence you know the the the colorful IMAX that came out in the late 90s and kind of leading into the Resurgence as as Steve Jobs came back and as the company kind of got their stuff together you know there are people that feel a loyalty there because it's like it's like rooting for a sports team through all the crappy years like you know you were a Boston Red Sox fan up until you know 2004 or whatever it was and you know you went through all those crapp years and now all the bandwagoners are on there and you're upset about them showing up and selling out Fenway and all that um I I I think that uh you know there's an emotional attachment there and and certainly I don't think that the Mac is going to be discontinued anytime soon or anything dramatic like that um but it's clear that Apple's focus is elsewhere and and Apple's reasoning for doing so is is definitely sound uh but that's that's not going to make people any happier yeah and and you know I I think people are clearly anxious now let's see if if that anxiety subsides in the near future I mean to bear clear I'm I'm not you know I'm just playing devil's advocate here for myself personally um I would love to see some big changes to the Mac I really like the new Macbook Pro um and I think that you know there's a lot of potential with the USBC connector um having tested the uh the new uh 21.5 inch 4K uh LG monitor which I we published a review of last week you know I was very upset about the ditching of the mag safe uh connector but in using the 21.5 in uh 4k monitor from LG uh the ultra fine uh I I really started to see the utility and the reason that Apple decided to get rid of uh mag safe because just connecting that one cable is pretty great and it really makes for an awesome Computing experience so um you know as those accessories come to Market and as Things become available there are opportunities for um the Mac to become more than it even is um certainly what I would like to see is some sort of uh external either Wireless or wired if they have to keyboard uh with a touch bar on that um so that you could have uh all the advantages of a touch bar while using it in desktop mode as I was saying before I'd really like to be able to just dock my MacBook Pro have a graphics card and a and a external monitor connected to it keyboard and mouse sit down at a workstation get stuff done and then when I got to go on the go unplug one cable it's charged and ready to go I think that would be a really really great experience for both power users and for traditional users who don't plug it into anything I think that everybody wins in that scenario all right so tell me more about the LG uh the LG ultrafine uh there are two models uh of this that are coming out Apple has gotten out of the display business and uh they've partnered with LG to make these kind of featured devices they're not necessarily uh going to remain Apple exclusive but for right now you can only buy it at the Apple Store so a couple months ago uh the 21.5 in 4k model launched which is the one that I reviewed I should note that this last week the 27in 5K model uh has started shipping to Consumers so uh keep your eyes peeled for a review on Apple Insider in the coming weeks but for now I just tested the smaller one 21.5 in now it's not a coincidence that both of these screen sizes are the exact same screen sizes as Apple's iMac lineup they do a 21.5 in and a 27 inch um and as with the iMac uh the different size monitors offer you different features the smaller one is a little bit less powerful and a little bit less capable the larger one has a better resolution and has full ledged Thunderbolt 3 support so that's really the the the main issue that I have um with the main issues that I have I should say with the 21.5 in ultra fine 4K from LG is it doesn't use Thunderbolt 3 it uses USB C with the USB 3.1 connection and what that means is uh you plug in one cable you get the monitor you get sound all that stuff but the USB C ports on the back of the monitor only run at USB 2.0 speeds they run at a slower speed that's because the USB 3.1 protocol does not have enough bandwidth to power more p uh faster uh uh accessories and a 4K screen at the same time so they had to make that concession and the reason they made that concession is because the 12-in MacBook uh does not have a thunderbolt 3 Port it only has a USBC 3.1 Port the single port on it so so this monitor works great if you have that 12 inch and I think that it should be something to consider for the people that have the 13-inch MacBook Pro um certainly you're not going to get this the full speed and capability out of the new Macbook Pro uh but especially if you have the one without the touch bar um I think the 21.5 in is a good option I don't think that most people are going to notice the difference uh uh going to USB 2.0 speeds versus 3.1 you know unless you're doing a ton of stuff with external hard drives and all that um I think that for most users it'll be fine and it depends on your desk space too some people just can't accommodate a 27in screen it's just too big so what what are the downsides throughout this besides the the usb2 speeds what what would keep you from getting this one well what gave me paus was I was testing it with the new 13-inch MacBook Pro Touch bar and uh if you want to use it in a desktop mode and you clamshell your MacBook Pro you've just lost your touch bar it's gone uh you not only lost that but you've lost these great uh four uh uh the the uh the the speakers on it uh sound fantastic on the new Macbook Pro well you don't have those anymore either you're you're losing some of the advantages of the redesign of the MacBook Pro by by docking it and connecting it to this monitor uh and so if you're planning on using it as a dual monitor setup even then it's kind of a problem because if your eyes are going to the bigger screen um then you're not going to be looking at the screen in front of you on the MacBook which means that uh your eyes are not really in a place to be looking at the touch bar which kind of defeats some of the purpose of it it would be nice if Apple uh decided to make a magic keyboard with a touch bar on it uh I think that would solve a lot of this problem um if if you want to use this in a dual monitor setup then you have a smaller 13in and then you have a big 21.5 in and then the the 13 Ines on your desk and then 21.5 in raised up on a monitor they're not really next to each other it it makes for kind of a cumbersome experience when you're doing it as a dual monitor setup with the screen built into your MacBook so I I think that um this is a great option for anyone with the 12-in MacBook it's a great option if you have the new 13-inch MacBook Pro without touch bar uh if you get the 13-inch MacBook Pro with touch bar uh then I would ask yourself how often you're going to be using the speed of Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 and how often you're going to be using the touch bar itself and how often you're going to be using Touch ID uh to log in as well because you're not going to get those features while it's clam shell um if you have the 15-inch MacBook Pro then I would not recommend this because the 15-inch MacBook Pro has its own dedicated graphics card and the jump up from 15 to 21.5 in is not as significant as it would be from 15 to 27 inches so if you get the 27inch model it has it does Thunderbolt 3 instead of USB 3 which makes it not compatible with the 12 point with the 12-in MacBook Pro uh it no no 12-in MacBook MacBook thank you yes too much jargon here um so the 15-inch MacBook Pro will connect over to Thunderbolt 3 and it has full speed USB 3.1 ports through USBC on the back of it so all of your USB accessories connected to the back of the 27in model will run at full speed they won't have any slowdown and it's a higher resolution 5K monitor so with the dedicated graphics card and the larger screen on the 15in I think you have to go to the 27in model to justify the purchase I think that for tweeners on the 13-in MacBook Pro depends on your usage case uh but the screen is gorgeous and the ability to connect just one cable and have that do sound and data and video and power and all of that uh is awesome uh you just sit down at your desk plug in one cable bam you're good to go everything just starts working there there isn't even a power button on the monitor there aren't even any controls on the monitor it's as simple as you could get uh dead simple and the power just comes through the monitor which is then plugged into your wall you only need that one cable and then you can keep your power adapter and USBC cable and your backpack or whatever for when you're on the go all right so what does it cost what do I have to pay out to get this thing so Apple um has been doing a discount on uh USBC accessories because of user complaints um uh with the switch to USBC so right now you can get the uh 21.5 in LG ultra fine for $524 the price is going to go up uh as of March 31st to 699 it was originally going to be January 1st of uh of 2017 but they pushed the deadline back so for $524 you get a gorgeous 4K 21.5 in screen uh it's a pretty good deal um and I think that uh if you're in the market for that size of a screen and you don't mind the concessions I think you'll be very happy with it the 27in model that just started shipping um is currently $974 when it goes up as of March 31st to its full price it'll be uh $1299.95 so good time to buy if you're on the market for these monitors they're competitively priced right now uh the 27 in has some other features that you don't get like a built-in camera and all that um and I think that that's a a pretty good option for a lot of folks too especially if you got a 15-inch MacBook Pro if you have an older Mac though don't bother you're going to be in dongle hell you're going to need adapters to plug in your Mac Pro or whatever um it's it's probably not worth it and I would you know this goes back to talking about whether Apple caters to Pro users or whatever uh keep your fingers crossed I guess that they'll do a Mac Pro update but I I don't know what to tell you I I I couldn't recommend buying one of these monitors and plugging with a bunch of dongles and stuff you're better off just getting another brand monitor diminishing returns right you you you get it you have to get all these adapters and then you wouldn't even be able to take advantage of of all its capabilities right yeah what makes these monitors great is the Simplicity of it and you've defeated the Simplicity of it if you need to go through adapter hell you know for folks that have a new Macbook Pro and they're trying to connect old monitors and they're trying to save some money okay that makes sense but if you've got an old Mac Pro and you're trying to connect this new monitor to it I think you're going to I think you're going to be unhappy right I want to take a moment and talk again about some deals we've got for you this time around I'm going to mention that we've got the 32 gig Apple TV for $109 magic keyboard for $77 Magic Mouse 2 For $52 and the magic track two for $96 so certainly there's mice keyboards and trackpads available at really good deals I also want to mention that the 64 gig Apple TV is available for $149 which is $50 off its list price and no sales tax outside New York and New Jersey so this is again through our good partners Adorama and if you go through our our website through a link that'll be in the show notes you can go and use the uh promo code AP Insider and take advantage of these deals Neil what what do you think we've got Paul Bruto asking a question about Apple's move into augmented reality as the next big thing and he's not talking about holding up the phone as much as you know holding up the phone to your face or or doing something like that as much as true augmented reality as he says with with some of the contact lenses and things like that real face recognition uh Apple watches sharing info with each other what what do you think about this kind of thing uh there's a lot of potential there um and I think it's pretty exciting and you can see some of the groundwork being with you know dual camera lenses on the iPhone 7 and some of the patents that Apple has shown interest in and uh particularly when it comes to mapping and finding locations and stuff like that um we haven't really seen Apple make a push into augmented reality um but they have admitted publicly which is strange uh for a secretive company that they're interested in it um I I think that uh what you'll see from Apple is maybe not necessarily augmented reality Hardware uh because I don't think that the technology is yet to make it something that is Sleek and attractive and uh uh that most people would want to wear um this is a lot of the issues that they were running into with the Apple watch which how do you make something fashionable and attractive that that people would want to wear well it's the glucal glass issue right right you look like a total geek um now of course you kind of look like a geek wearing airpods so what do I know but um I I think that uh you know something on your wrist uh solid piece of whatever is is easier to uh get away with uh being a little geeky as opposed to something on your face where people are looking at you when they speak to you uh then it becomes a little bit more difficult so you could look at the Snapchat approach where they have these like kind of oversized glasses and they're kind of embracing the geekiness and weirdness of it um versus Google trying to be like Sleek or whatever but it just didn't come off it just kind of made you look like a loser I think that uh when when you think about Apple and augmented reality you kind of have to throw your conventions of what augmented reality is going to be 15 20 years from now and think a little bit more shorter term and realistic in terms of uh uh what you can do with current technology we're not at a point right now where you can have traditional glasses that somebody would wear and embed all the technology in there and have them just look like normal glasses we just don't have that technology right now so you could think about applications just where you would maybe hold your phone up or look at stuff on it um and have augmented reality work that way um one of the ideas that's been put out there is that perhaps Apple will get into the virtual and real augmented reality Space by folding it into the made for iPhone program so in the same way that you can make accessories for iPhone or you can make you know game controllers or you know homekit things or whatever uh there will be a licensing program of you know made for apple arvr and it could be headsets that you plug on your head if you want to wear those it could be apps that uh allow you to interact with the world around you just by holding up your phone and looking at it um it could be things that use the dual camera setup on the iPhone 7 plus uh there's a lot of groundwork laid there for potential you know using the gyus Scopes and GPS accelerometer data and all that in your iPhone uh you could easily see where Apple could create a platform to allow people to do those sorts of things but I don't see them necessarily in the short term making a wearable device in the vein of the Apple watch for augmented reality because I don't think the Technologies there and I think it would be a failure yeah well first of all no one really wants to wear anything on their faces right and and you know contact lenses for people who don't need to wear contact lenses is also not a thing right right unless unless you're changing your eye color through colored contact lenses for some reason no one does this so but could you sell people on it if you could pack that technology into a contact lens maybe I mean but i' beant you know we're talking about we're talking about battery life we're talking about size technology forget about those things the question is what's the experience that you deliver right who whose problem are you solving and what is the job to be done right is is the job helping someone who's a technician be able to maintain or or construct whatever they're working on better because they have a diagram that's overlaid on top of their reality so they can see exactly what it should look like when they're finished or or is it about you know helping jog your memory when you're introduced to someone is it about you know what are the kinds of applications well I think the applications for augmented reality are Limitless I mean you think about how excited people were with a blank canvas of a screen on a phone or a tablet where it could turn into anything you wanted with buttons wherever you needed what have you yeah but it took us a while to figure out how to use that thing the the early early applications many of them were Recreations of applications from Palm Os or Windows CE right we had to learn what to do with this thing but when Once the app store opened yes there were a lot of failures and a lot of things that weren't uh particularly good uh but it it was the Limitless potential that that people saw that made the App Store so successful and so exciting and continues to be to this day right so take all of that blank canvas concept and apply it to the world around you and the the possibilities if the technology Works become Limitless right you could um you know uh Envision uh just think about like for example decorating a home uh pieces of furniture seeing how they would fit how they would look uh painting your walls wallpaper uh you know changing the color of things what whatever you want to do you could do entire interior design design just by having an application that would give you the ability to do that sort of thing and the technology is there currently to do it it's just not in a wearable form right there's certainly apps that you can do that with on your iPhone but imagine if you were there and could almost you know see it uh with your own eyes essentially uh trying on clothes you know imagine if there was an application where you could go to an online store and you never know how this stuff's going to fit right you just never know how it's going to fit well it has a body scan of you you stand in front of a mirror you wear these glasses and now you look and you see how the shirt's going to look on you that kind of stuff I mean there there's possibility educational yeah and that's that's actually something Levis used to do years ago Levis used to have in their physical retail stores a body scanner where you'd step in it would scan you and then place an order for custommade jeans that would actually fit exactly uh and and you talked about remembering people you know you see them it recognizes their face it goes oh that's Joe you know you know them from here it gives you little things that you can quickly access without having to pull out a phone or look or check something you know uh uh all kinds of applications think about for like educational purposes is if you were to visit uh uh ruins of a city or something you could have it be virtually brought back to life in front of you you could see what it was like I mean it's so exciting and there's so much potential for augmented reality that uh any company that is into technology and advancing it would be interested in augmented reality I mean the potential is Limitless and we haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to things like games and all that so I think that you know obviously it makes sense for Apple to be looking to augmented reality obviously uh they see something there because I think anybody who has the foresight to see what technology is capable of can see the Limitless potential of augmented reality the form that it takes is the question how do you get to that place where it's a contact lens or you know if you want to go Black Mirror on this a chip implanted in the back of your head or something like that you know how do we get to that point where it becomes a seamless experience where um you are not looking like a total dork for using it that's a very good question I don't hate the answers yet you want to move on to another question uh we have another one on Twitter here from Darren Maine and he wants to know is it worth the upgrade from The Watch series one to series two uh I don't want to correct you Darren because perhaps you worded the question properly but um uh my assumption here is that you're thinking of the first generation Apple watch and uh this gives me an opportunity to kind of as opposed to the confusingly named series one yeah so what happened was when the new Apple watch came out this fall Apple launched three new models um basically I mean if you want to get into you know the camic they launched two and a half new models well the ceramic one if you wanted to count that as its own model I suppose uh the the the new edition which is not you know I'm counting series one as a half new model fair enough um but then there's also the Apple watch sport uh or I'm sorry the nikee Apple watch so here's your lineup Apple watch first generation launched in April of 2015 is no more it is not being sold by Apple if you can find it at the store it's heavily discounted it's a it's a essentially a dead product that doesn't mean that um just destroyed the resale value of my new inbox first person it does not mean that you should be unhappy with your first generation Apple watch it just means that Apple realized the processor was too slow and they moved on so they released two different variants this here they have the series one watch which has a faster dual core processor um essentially the same chip that's in the series 2 watch it just lacks GPS and it lacks the waterproofing uh I thought it was a wait a minute correct me because I thought it was a single core version of the same board that's in series 2 I believe it's a dual core chip all right carry on let me look and check I don't have the series one watch but the reason I say all this is because I believe that this question being asked by Darren he's referring to the first gener last year's watch because a lot of people think that the series one is they just discounted the price of last year's model but they did not it's a new board so if you read it's a s1p it's a dual core processor but it's not the S2 it's a new variant of the S1 called the s1p that's a dual core processor I see that and then the S2 who knows what the difference is I guess they're faster but you know with with this weird branding that Apple does that's just the way it is uh the series 2 has built-in GPS and it's water resistant uh 50 m the brand new series 1 is not water resistant it is Splash resistant so you could shower with it but you wouldn't want to swim with it basically right other than that the watches are uh large of the same the um second generation one has a twice as bright screen uh the series 2 versus the series 1 um and then when you get in the rest of the lineup they have the same internal Hardware as the series 2 so the Nike Apple watch has a uh S2 processor waterproof uh GPS all that um and then the high-end uh uh stainless steel and ceramic Edition versions uh have the same uh screen and and uh processing power and all that kind of stuff so if you have a series one should you get a series two no if you have a first generation should you get a series two maybe if you're an outdoor Runner I think so yeah and if you're not an outdoor Runner or a swimmer don't bother wait for next Generation The Watch os3 upgrade uh makes a huge difference in performance and you're not going to notice that big of a difference uh switching to the series 2 it certainly is faster but it's not worth your $400 to get it faster okay good answer all right well let's go to our next question uh Dan rer wanted some info about vpns and popup blockers actually okay um what do you know about popup blockers um I don't really have a lot of problems with popups uh per se um and I'm I'm I don't support ad blockers um we've talked about this before just because I run a website and we make our money from free content with ads on it so uh you know I I would hope that folks would consider allowing ads when they go to Apple Insider wrong person to ask that's the uh that's the um how we make money but uh and how I pay my bills but um when it comes to VPN I I did mention it on the podcast last week and I'll mention it again um I tried out an app while I was in Mexico so I could use HBO GO or HBO now whichever it is called tunnel bear and uh was extremely pleased uh very simple UI uh transparent pricing very fair it was $4 for unlimited data for a month um super easy to use um I really was happy with it so uh if you want to try VPN uh on your iPhone or iPad um the experience was uh fantastic you just tapped what country you wanted to appear that you were coming from it uh would automatically uh enable the VPN settings on iOS and you were good to go and I could stream the content and I was extremely happy with it so tunnel bear comes highly recommended if you have any pop-up blockers or ad blockers you can recommend Victor that would let you decide on that uh so tunnel bear is a very popular one and it has been for years I I've also used private internet access which is a VPN service and works on iPhone and on Mac and uh nordvpn is another one that I'm trying out the the question that you need to ask yourself is what you're using a VP for and what you hope to get out of it are you trying to obate traffic from uh your your local connection and local provider are you trying to to make sure that your data as you go across the Internet isn't logged what what what are you trying to really do are you trying to prevent yourself from being exposed at a coffee shop kind of thing where people can sniff your your data that way um it it depends on the threat model and you know if your threat model is you're trying to avoid being hacked by three-letter government agencies determined to get it you I have no advice whatsoever because I just don't know how to do that and I don't know how to make a good recommendation but if if you're trying to increase your privacy and increase your security of data through encrypting your traffic using a VPN as a decent answer finding a VPN provider that has a policy of keeping zero logs is a good idea um how you decide that you can trust them for having a zero logs policy is another question and that's another one that I don't have a good answer to but for example both nordvpn and and private internet access VPN both say or Pia VPN both say that they have zero logs policies so uh that's where I would uh begin looking and I really don't have good information about pop-up blockers because popup aren't a problem I've experienced in a few years uh for whatever reason the sites that I go to don't really have popups the uh the the using just Safari as it ships from Apple I haven't had that as a big issue I've had a few times where it's been an annoyance and in that case I force quit Safari and and reopen and don't open the windows that cause those problems I I'm sorry that's not a better answer well Neil on that note let's have a resounding end to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you on the internet uh you can read my stuff on appleinsider.com and you can follow me on Twitter at this is Neil NE L and I'm your host Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter and this has been the Apple Insider podcast and if Neil decides that he wants to upgrade from a series 1 watch to a series 3 watch we'll tell you all about it sometime in the future on the Apple Insider podcast thank you very much everybody and please feel free to leave reviews on iTunes we hope they're positive ones but we totally understand if you aren't we read all the comments we read all the reviews we really care about what you guys think and we hope that you enjoy listening so please feel free to reviews and we'll see you next weekyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where we discuss all things Apple Mac iPhone iPad and more with me is editor and chief Neil Hughes hey Victor how's it going excellent how are you doing doing well settling into the new apartment I guess takes some time you know yeah well you fully kitted that thing out with with tons of Philip Hub bulbs and and things like that so I I think it ought to be great I'd love to see it someday yeah yeah it's uh it's nice to have everything kind of controlled by voice it's coming together slowly but uh yeah and that my friends is how you invite yourself to Neil's house we've got a ton of questions from our our listeners and readers and before we get to that I want to go over one of our uh our offers for all of our listeners so we've got some killer deals you can save $130 to $350 instantly on Apple's new touch bar MacBook Pros with Apple Care plus no tax in 48 states so this is a first come first served offer apple and cider readers can use exclusive coupons this week to instantly save between 130 to 350 on pre-orders for every possible configuration of Apple's new late 2016 MacBook Pros bundled with Apple Care uh this is through our friends at Adorama and we will have the link on our website come through our Apple price guide and use the promo code AP Insider and and Adorama will be happy to sell you one of these with the instant savings and also not collect sales tax on orders shipped outside of New York and New Jersey we'll go ahead and have that in the show notes and we'll get right into the show now so Neil one of the questions that we had was what are Apple's plans for the pro user and and I know that you don't exactly know Apple's plans at least not down to the detail but we we had an article that Roger wrote about this about how there a lot of people really concerned that apple is losing focus on the Mac that that uh there is no dedicated Mac team that there is no Mac Pro that that the Mac feels like an afterthought to iOS well to be clear there there is a dedicated Mac team uh the Mac is not dead uh but the focus is very much so on the iPhone uh that's just kind of the way things are that's where the money's at and that's what consumers are buying and and anybody who doesn't realize that has been paying attention uh this was a story that came out through Bloomberg this week and it was clear that Apple kind of wanted to get the jump on it because a few days before a memo from Tim Cook to an internal Apple employee or two internal employees leaked out conveniently uh saying that uh Apple saw a bright future for its uh its Mac desktops and that it had plenty of stuff in the pipeline but the comment great desktops are coming right right but the the way that the quote was worded led a number of people people myself included to believe that uh Apple sees the future of the desktop in the iMac and uh would seem to suggest that the Mac Pro which hasn't now been updated in I guess three years it was end of 2013 that the new design launched um it's kind of a niche product in what is already a niche subset of computing uh the Mac uh and it would seem that apple is not particularly focused on the Mac Pro and that is upsetting to a lot of users that uh want or Developers you know filmmakers whatever that want high-end machines but um I would have to say that you know from whatever the the numbers that Apple has internally whatever their justification for it is at the end of the day they're business and they're going to do what it takes to make money and to stay in business and most of the focus is on the iPhone and that's just the way it is so I I was reading in my Twitter feed this morning uh someone that I follow said that the the Mac is on maintenance mode and that the Mac is essentially existing as developer machine to build iOS apps I mean it's hard to disagree with that it's hard to disagree with that um you can see the level of innovation that's taking place in the Mac is uh not particularly high as compared to how it's been before um you know you have new thinner designs you have a switch to USBC ports you have better retina displays you have the touch bar um I really like current Macs I like the MacBook Pro but there's certainly a sense of when you see things like the uh what do they call that surface uh iMac ripoff the the one that the the Microsoft Surface that is the uh the the W kind of style thing right it it folds down into a desktop that you draw on yeah and I mean we're talking about Niche devices and that's certainly another one where not a lot of people are that are going to be doing traditional Computing are going to see a need for that device however uh it is generating Buzz for Microsoft I think it's easier for Microsoft to focus on products like that because they already lost the mobile race anyhow I mean you know apple is making money hand over fist from the iPhone the iPhone accounts for 60 70 some odd percent of its Revenue um and even the iPad is bigger than the Mac uh in terms of unit sales for sure um and revenue from the iPad is going back up now that the Pro Models are out so you know you you look at those uh options that are out there on the table right now and the Mac Pro is not something that's been getting focused and the MacBook Pro took a while to get updated and there's a lot of reasons for that Intel processors uh all that sort of stuff uh that they're kind of beholding to their Partners but I I think that some big changes may be coming to the Mac in the next three four five years especially if Apple starts going with its own in in-house chips but I don't know that there are the kind of changes that quote unquote Pro users are going to be really excited about right so so for the pro user you think that Pro users need to make their own plans and need to think about what uh what their future of computing looks like yeah I mean it's it's it's difficult to say I mean what are your options right you know roll your own Linux machine go over to Windows or something um well no you can buy a bunch of old Macs stockpile them and keep them loaded with the software that you use on them yeah but if they're they're underpowered um I think all I'm saying is I mean I know people that are are stuck on imov 6 because that was the tool that worked the best for them before they threw out what iMovie was and redid it right so you keep a machine around that runs that and um you know keep going on the tools you need and and suffer through uh uh whatever Hardware it's running on and whatever version of os 10 it's running just so you can run iMovie I mean I can't imagine that a lot of people are going to do that but this is again we're talking about a subset of a subset of computing customers right you know the Mac is what uh at best it per Market 10% of of it's always been pretty low in percentage and that's that's never mattered until you know years that's because in recent years the iPhone came out and it makes a lot more money and in many ways is the future of personal Computing all you have to do is listen to Steve Jobs comments about PCS being trucks that's just what it is that that's that's Apple's internal philosophy that was a guiding philosophy even before Steve left and it continues to be to this day they haven't abandoned the Mac they continue to put out new hardware but it's not as pro- focused it's more prosumer SLC consumer focused and for those users that really need high-end professional grade stuff uh they're just not catering to them as much anymore because they don't see a need to okay so I'm gonna framing it like this you're telling me that I need to listen to Steve Jobs who said that in 2010 we're in the post PC era and then Tim Cook who says that the iPad Pro is the future of computing and so for the pro user the expectation is that you will use an iPad Pro no I don't think so um I think uh I think that the expectation is that the iPad is going to continue to get better uh iPad Pro is obviously a branding uh thing that that Apple did um but yeah so I think that the iPad Pro is more of a branding thing than anything else um I think that uh certainly a lot of professional grade folks that are doing high-end photo editing or video editing or certainly iOS development are not going to be replacing their Mac with an iPad uh anytime soon I think that Apple would eventually like to get there but uh as we're in this kind of awkward transition phase um you you know the criticism of course that would be leveled at Apple would be you're the biggest company on the planet you have more money than you could ever know what to do with how can you not focus on uh multiple products at once why is it so difficult for Apple to uh put resources toward multiple products and and it feels like they they focus all their effort on putting one thing out and then the focus kind of shifts to another and they allocate resources accordingly and stuff like that and you know you have to assume that's part of Apple's corporate structure or something the way that they're uh laid out there the way that things are intended to be done but uh certainly can't disagree with that criticism that you know perhaps Apple should find a better way to focus on all these products and give them the attention that they deserve yeah and they've had that problem since I want to say uh gosh leopard and Snow Leopard yeah that this is you know that was the one where they got up at WWDC and said we're delaying everything um we'll release the operating system when we're getting ready right because they had to apparently allocate developers from Snow Leopard over to iOS because it was running behind schedule so yeah again where's the focus at um there's a product that makes more money is bought by more consumers um and is what Apple sees as the future of computing you know whatever skate to where the Puck's going to be you know as they say so uh I think that's why you see this shift in apple and for a long time Apple devotees uh this is a uh something that is upsetting to them but Apple runs a business so all right let's move on to our next question which is from Nick hurl in the UK and Nick writes uh Happy Happy 100th episode guys really enjoy your podcast every week my question is why are people so obsessed with high-capacity iPhones for storing photos and videos I ask this because I'm a big user of iCloud photo sharing I have the ability to save 500,000 photos and videos and also share them with my family this does not cost me any extra money nor does it eat into my iCloud storage weirdly why are users not opting for this feature I mean so Neil M you you like a big iPhone I did and I had to downgrade because I switched to a 64 gig iPhone SE because it's the largest they make uh but I had 128 gig iPhone before that and if I were buying a new one now i' would get a 256 gig um certainly Apple has done things in recent years I think mostly to quiet the critics who say that uh 16 gig um iPhone was not enough certainly they fixed that this year by getting rid of the 16 gig entry level capacity but uh there were a lot of people who couldn't even install iOS updates because it would take up too much space or require too much space to download in order to install um and so Apple made these uh changes to uh shrink photos store them in the cloud that sort of stuff um as for why somebody would want a larger capacity iPhone uh well in my case for example I don't want to have to download photos I'll go back through photos that I took you know years ago um it's much easier to find photos now with all the power that has been put into the photos app on iOS um between uh the quick browsing and thumbing over of the photos search capabilities tagging people's faces you name it I'm going back and finding old photos all the time um and the search capabilities are are very powerful and if you tap on a photo that is not saved on your phone it loads a low resolution one and then it needs to download the higher resolution one from the cloud which uses data and takes time and if you don't have a data connection like if you're on a flight or if you are on you know a train subway underground or something like that or just in a place that has poor connection or slow internet or what have you uh that becomes something of a problem as well um not to mention um if you're like me and you like to listen to music offline and for example transfer it to your Apple watch when you want to exercise you have to have it stored on your phone to do that kind of stuff to listen to it on a flight where you may not have internet connection again on Subway or something like that uh that all takes up space and so at any given time my phone has anywhere from 10 to 20 Gigabytes of music on it it has 15 to 20 Gigabytes of photos and and videos on it not to mention all the apps and stuff that you download which are getting bigger and bigger by the day um so there's a lot of reasons to have a higher capacity um phone I think that Apple has done a good job of kind of satisfying both markets the ability to keep stuff stored off your phone uh the fact that data and uh app purchases and all that are saved in the cloud so you can delete stuff and reinstall it when you need it um it's easier than ever to get by with a smaller capacity phone if you really want to uh but I think that buying a a higher capacity phone is usually a good idea because then you don't have to you just don't have to worry about that kind of stuff I I agree um I'm looking at my usage in my iPhone currently and it says that I've got 47 gig used and 13 gig of that is photos and I do allow it to use the cloud for for storage so it's doing doing the the downloading of the low resolution first or showing the low resolution first and then downloading the high resolution image but I have enough capacity on the phone that it's allowed itself to balloon that much rather than keeping it more stringently in the cloud uh Amazon Prime Instant Video ate up a bunch uh a GPS application ate up a bunch for offline maps um Twitter's chewing up some iMovies chewing up some podcasts surprisingly are chewing up about 578 Meg but uh I suspect that all of these would be a lot lean if I had the smaller gigabyte phone it forces you to and if you buy a higher capacity phone it's one thing that one less thing you have to worry about and I suppose if you're obsessive compulsive or a neat freak or whatever you might be the type to do that anyhow in which case more power to you get a lower capacity phone but what I like to do when possible is just to buy the bigger capacity and just not worry about it you know I have a terabyte of storage on Dropbox and I don't ever really have to worry about cleaning it up um and I when I downsized one of the things that I did was I moved all the movies that I had saved on my phone to Dropbox and just deleted them off my phone so they're no longer there um because I just didn't you know have the space form and they're shot in 4k now and they take up a ton of space on there uh I also download an app I think it's called uh uh I think Lively uh is or no I think that's one that turns into gifts but there's some app on there that uh goes through and finds live photos on my phone and allows me to uh turn them into not live photos so it saves the space so you cut a live photo down from like 12 15 megabytes down to like 3 four megabytes you know you got a few hundred photos like that you save some space sure and the app takes up room itself and yeah but it it it allows me to kind of cut down on on photos that take up more space and to kind of uh pinch a little bit I do it too where I'll go through because I do a lot of burst photos and thankfully all the burst photos are saved in their own folder in the photos app so then I just go through and just delete all the burst photos or just save one of them and then that frees up a lot of space as well yeah I find that I have a lot of screenshots that I've taken when I'm looking at different apps and reviewing apps and and those are saved in their own folder as well which makes easier to go back and delete them yes so the answer is that most people are are either uncomfortable with or have not yet taken advantage of the cloud storage options that Apple pushes forward and when they they do it's possible to use the lower Storage phone but if you don't have to then most people don't yeah and certainly there are a lot of people that just get the lower capacity phone because it's saves them 100 bucks or whatever and that's a perfectly fine option it really depends on what your Computing needs are especially on the go you know iPhones now are more powerful than ever before uh iMovie I'm always singing the Praises of it on on iPhone because it's fantastic I mean if you think about 10 years ago what it used to take to edit a video you'd have to shoot it essentially on on tape get some way of converting that over to a computer uh and then yeah and then uh having to edit it and then how would you export well there was certainly no YouTube to put it on um uh you know 10 or 11 years ago so uh you would have to find a place to store it or burn it onto a DVD or something you know the the capabilities now to shoot and edit and text message or post on Facebook or YouTube or whatever the videos from your phone are Beyond powerful um and and the capabilities are are very powerful and so people want more storage so they can do more of that kind of stuff I I want to point out YouTube was founded 11 years ago we're getting old you you you said 10 or 11 years ago there was no YouTube and actually there was was but uh you know you're right that it used to be a lot more of a process to deal with video you had to deal with the tape and when you uploaded footage from your your camera to your computer it took it in real time so you had to sit and play through the hours of footage that you'd shot in real time and then you know and if you were doing multiple tapes you had to change tapes and import those again in real time it was kind of laborious uh and and then go through and edit them and then you're right what are you do when you EXP well back in the old days you used DVD because you had a DVD recorder around and you could use idvd to export a DVD and that too was another task you're you're right mobile iMovie makes a big difference um the the phone really does become a a computer a personal computer that's with you everywhere you go and when it is that computer then we we use it like one and that's where the storage needs come from I want to get to our next question which I know you'll like so does the audio quality of the airpods justify the price Wireless is nice but at the end of the day sound quality matters to me says the the asker so let's uh let's look we've got our super cool airpods review that we published today uh written by Daniel Aron dger and what do you think of the airpods have you had a chance to use them yet no I haven't I'm not interested in the airpods I think they look a little goofy um and I don't um I don't trust them not to fall out of my ears and so I suppose I'm sure somebody out there makes some sort of AD adapter to clip around my ear or something um but then I can't put it in the charging case to charge it I have to take them off and you know and and I like to run outside and I just see it being a very costly disaster so it's not a product for me um okay so I'm not interested in them however uh the reviews including our own from Dan um all talk about how the sound quality is surprisingly good um the the fit is uh similar to the Earp pods but uh slightly better um and without a cable snagging around your neck they stay in your ears better and you know I've read a lot of various takes online and most people say that the the airpods stay in your ear extremely well people seem very very pleased by it there is the occasional person who couldn't get it to stay in their ear it was fumbling around everybody's got different ears Apple went for one size fits-all approach and uh uh that's their way of doing it and uh it's not going to be for everybody um it may be something you want to try before you buy or at least pop your earpods back in and see how comfortable you are with those before you buy the airpods but you know this question asked about price uh well if you compare uh other Wireless products on the market and by Wireless I mean entirely Wireless uh like the brag ey Dash and the Samsung ones and whatever else uh Apple's airpods at uh $170 are the cheapest option on the market when it comes to entirely Wireless not only that uh Apple has technology in there so each earpiece communicates directly with the phone rather than to one another is how the other ones work um so the other ones uh from what I've read are way more susceptible to dropouts because sending a wireless signal between your skull uh is kind of difficult uh sending signals through you know flesh and and watery substances gets blocked as we've talked about on this podcast before with Bluetooth reception issues and all that so it gets Amplified when you have two earpieces so Apple got around that by not having the earpieces necessarily communicate with one another but having them communicate through the phone um and that seems to make a difference from the testing you also have to factor in Apple's W1 chip which I do have experience with in using the uh Power Beats 3 and it is a rock solid connection that works fantastic uh so again you have the easier pairing associated with it uh the fact these things cost $30 less than the power beads 3 they're completely wireless they come with the battery charging in case which can recharge you know four or five times on your on your airpods which on their own get about 5 hours of charge which means that with with this charging case you'll only have to plug it in about once a week to keep using the airpods so there's a lot of advantages here and it's a pretty good product and all the reviews bear that out including our own yeah and our own has a great picture of Dan doing a headstand trying to get them to fall out and he can't get them to fall out so in terms of fit they totally pass to to answer the the the uh listener's question about sound quality it it seems to be that they're just darn very good I I know that that's hard to answer but they're you know we're going from reviews and reviews are written in words we haven't had a chance to actually hear them for our own ears um in their current design airpods sound quality does benefit from EQ settings and you can manually raise or lower their sound but this requires adjusting things from your Mac iPhone or Apple watch or alternatively using Siri so um doing a little bit of EQ with them helps and by EQ that's uh in the music app you can change to different types of music acoustic bass booster bass reducer things like that using those settings makes a difference they're uh they're they're quite good let's keep going um what do you think Neil um we have a a a couple on uh Twitter here that we got uh one from Leah mein that says uh they're looking to upgrade their iPhone 6 in early 2017 they want to know if they should go for the 7 wait for the 7s or wait for the eight uh interesting question um and I think that the the answer there is I usually say I give it like a six- months window when it comes to making recommendations to people if you're buying within six months of the launch of an iPhone you should get it um next year's iPhone situation is is going to be interesting because the expectation is that there's going to be three new iPhones there's going to be two ones that look like the seven and there's going to be a new high-end phone which will probably cost even more uh and it's going to have a all new design um I think that people are going to be really really excited for a new design iPhone because it'll have been you know over three years in the making at that point so the question I would uh ask somebody who would want to know when they should buy an iPhone is how bad do you really want a new design because if you're within that six-month window of the launch of a new iPhone I'd say buy it if you're outside of that six-month window then just wait because you're close enough you know to the next one but um yeah I would say if you're really really excited about the eight then um then for the new design then I would wait and I I would also say since we're talking about the idea of the eight you know the eight has the uh the know the eight has a uh we've had rumors about curved screens and it looks like one of the rumors is saying that that's going to be an OLED piece of glass from Samsung yes um the expectation is that Samsung is going to be the sole supplier of OLED displays for the next iPhone uh because Samsung is the only company with the capacity to do that others like Japan display are trying to ramp up capacity and that's more of an Insider thing I mean it doesn't really matter who's supplying the display for people buying a new phone but um OLED could potentially lead to battery life savings and better picture quality on the new iPhone but the capacity remains limited why which is why it's expected that OLED is only going to be featured on the allnew design quote unquote iPhone 8 or I've heard it referred to as the iPhone x because it'll be 10 years after the launch of the first iPhone so um with OED you could potentially have battery life savings because of the technology the way it works um uh it could it could uh use less power to power the screen uh the colors are brighter and more vibrant and stuff like that so expect that new high-end iPhone to have a really really really great screen one of of uh James's questions was can we interpret good things from Tim Cook's remarks about Apple's commitment to the Mac or can we speculate Apple will just slap a Mac badge on any computer and say C what about the Mac Pro and Mac Mini will desktop Mac slim down to the iMac exclusively and will the Mac get so paper thin they'll just have to go with only integrated Graphics to keep it from overheating and and he goes on you know will will 3DX Point come to the iMac in 2017 and if so only 128 gig or so to start hybrid SSD and 3DX point I I think we talked about the Mac a little bit but the reason why I read these questions is that it's clear that a lot of people are really experiencing anxiety about what's going to happen to the Mac yeah I again that goes back to to this small subset of people that really need those power user features I mean you know Macs today are more powerful than they've ever been uh but some people need that more horsepower with a dedicated graphics card and all that kind of stuff I remain hopeful that um Apple will uh use Thunderbolt 3 and USBC to increase the expandability of the um Macintosh line so uh there there are hacks that people can put together where they can plug in an external graphics card to a MacBook Pro um and get some horsepower that way there have been rumors of a uh of displays with integrated graphics cards that would you know kind of push pixels um so you could have a discrete graphics card when you're docked at home to your MacBook Pro and turn it into essentially you know workstation a very powerful computer and then on the go you have your keyboard and your screen and all that kind of stuff uh remains to be seen whether that actually happens but that's something that I would be very excited about uh as somebody who likes to have that extra horsepower when I'm sitting at a desk or whatever and don't necessarily need the portability You' invented the Mac duod do you remember that really really old one yeah yeah that was one of the ones that was on Seinfeld years ago um you know this is I I've been thinking and I wonder it years ago when you know 1997 98 when when Apple was in critical condition there were a number of people that were strongly loyal to Apple at the time because they loved their Macintosh es and what I wonder is is are people's loyalties to the Mac are people's loyalties to Apple are people's loyalties to their iPhone and you know if if Apple discontinued the Mac tomorrow what would what would happen would there be limited outrage from a limited number of people as you suggest or or is this um is there some bigger emotional attachment to the Mac that Apple either don't see or haven't taken into account because they think the emotional attachment is to I mean I think that uh I I think that both sides are true on this one you know Apple runs a business and apple also is trying to define the future of computing and and notebooks and computers and their current form factor pretty well established right you know we can have a debate over touch screens versus the touch bar and the utility of extending your arm out while using a a Surface Pro and how tiring that can be and how Apple's own user tests have found that it's not a good way of computing but you know other than that kind of stuff for the most part by and large e even stuff that is quote unquote revolutionary like the uh uh the surface uh Pro uh that that Microsoft makes that that docks with a keyboard and then detaches as a tablet but when it's docked it has a more powerful uh processor and all that kind of stuff I mean even still you're still dealing with the same general form factor of a laptop right I mean okay now you can detach a tablet and still do stuff with it but at the end of the day it's still a screen that clamshells into a keyboard you know um so I think that when Apple is is looking at that that is part of when you're talking about the future of computing and all that that's where their bias is that's what they're they're looking for is to find the next thing the big thing that's going to define the next you know 20 years of computing having played such a large part in the last 30 years of personal Computing but on the flip side for users as you say there's some sort of emotional attachment here for people that stuck by a company even through the crummy years even through you know the mid 90s when God knows what they were thinking with some of that stuff um you know the people that were there during the Resurgence you know the the the colorful IMAX that came out in the late 90s and kind of leading into the Resurgence as as Steve Jobs came back and as the company kind of got their stuff together you know there are people that feel a loyalty there because it's like it's like rooting for a sports team through all the crappy years like you know you were a Boston Red Sox fan up until you know 2004 or whatever it was and you know you went through all those crapp years and now all the bandwagoners are on there and you're upset about them showing up and selling out Fenway and all that um I I I think that uh you know there's an emotional attachment there and and certainly I don't think that the Mac is going to be discontinued anytime soon or anything dramatic like that um but it's clear that Apple's focus is elsewhere and and Apple's reasoning for doing so is is definitely sound uh but that's that's not going to make people any happier yeah and and you know I I think people are clearly anxious now let's see if if that anxiety subsides in the near future I mean to bear clear I'm I'm not you know I'm just playing devil's advocate here for myself personally um I would love to see some big changes to the Mac I really like the new Macbook Pro um and I think that you know there's a lot of potential with the USBC connector um having tested the uh the new uh 21.5 inch 4K uh LG monitor which I we published a review of last week you know I was very upset about the ditching of the mag safe uh connector but in using the 21.5 in uh 4k monitor from LG uh the ultra fine uh I I really started to see the utility and the reason that Apple decided to get rid of uh mag safe because just connecting that one cable is pretty great and it really makes for an awesome Computing experience so um you know as those accessories come to Market and as Things become available there are opportunities for um the Mac to become more than it even is um certainly what I would like to see is some sort of uh external either Wireless or wired if they have to keyboard uh with a touch bar on that um so that you could have uh all the advantages of a touch bar while using it in desktop mode as I was saying before I'd really like to be able to just dock my MacBook Pro have a graphics card and a and a external monitor connected to it keyboard and mouse sit down at a workstation get stuff done and then when I got to go on the go unplug one cable it's charged and ready to go I think that would be a really really great experience for both power users and for traditional users who don't plug it into anything I think that everybody wins in that scenario all right so tell me more about the LG uh the LG ultrafine uh there are two models uh of this that are coming out Apple has gotten out of the display business and uh they've partnered with LG to make these kind of featured devices they're not necessarily uh going to remain Apple exclusive but for right now you can only buy it at the Apple Store so a couple months ago uh the 21.5 in 4k model launched which is the one that I reviewed I should note that this last week the 27in 5K model uh has started shipping to Consumers so uh keep your eyes peeled for a review on Apple Insider in the coming weeks but for now I just tested the smaller one 21.5 in now it's not a coincidence that both of these screen sizes are the exact same screen sizes as Apple's iMac lineup they do a 21.5 in and a 27 inch um and as with the iMac uh the different size monitors offer you different features the smaller one is a little bit less powerful and a little bit less capable the larger one has a better resolution and has full ledged Thunderbolt 3 support so that's really the the the main issue that I have um with the main issues that I have I should say with the 21.5 in ultra fine 4K from LG is it doesn't use Thunderbolt 3 it uses USB C with the USB 3.1 connection and what that means is uh you plug in one cable you get the monitor you get sound all that stuff but the USB C ports on the back of the monitor only run at USB 2.0 speeds they run at a slower speed that's because the USB 3.1 protocol does not have enough bandwidth to power more p uh faster uh uh accessories and a 4K screen at the same time so they had to make that concession and the reason they made that concession is because the 12-in MacBook uh does not have a thunderbolt 3 Port it only has a USBC 3.1 Port the single port on it so so this monitor works great if you have that 12 inch and I think that it should be something to consider for the people that have the 13-inch MacBook Pro um certainly you're not going to get this the full speed and capability out of the new Macbook Pro uh but especially if you have the one without the touch bar um I think the 21.5 in is a good option I don't think that most people are going to notice the difference uh uh going to USB 2.0 speeds versus 3.1 you know unless you're doing a ton of stuff with external hard drives and all that um I think that for most users it'll be fine and it depends on your desk space too some people just can't accommodate a 27in screen it's just too big so what what are the downsides throughout this besides the the usb2 speeds what what would keep you from getting this one well what gave me paus was I was testing it with the new 13-inch MacBook Pro Touch bar and uh if you want to use it in a desktop mode and you clamshell your MacBook Pro you've just lost your touch bar it's gone uh you not only lost that but you've lost these great uh four uh uh the the uh the the speakers on it uh sound fantastic on the new Macbook Pro well you don't have those anymore either you're you're losing some of the advantages of the redesign of the MacBook Pro by by docking it and connecting it to this monitor uh and so if you're planning on using it as a dual monitor setup even then it's kind of a problem because if your eyes are going to the bigger screen um then you're not going to be looking at the screen in front of you on the MacBook which means that uh your eyes are not really in a place to be looking at the touch bar which kind of defeats some of the purpose of it it would be nice if Apple uh decided to make a magic keyboard with a touch bar on it uh I think that would solve a lot of this problem um if if you want to use this in a dual monitor setup then you have a smaller 13in and then you have a big 21.5 in and then the the 13 Ines on your desk and then 21.5 in raised up on a monitor they're not really next to each other it it makes for kind of a cumbersome experience when you're doing it as a dual monitor setup with the screen built into your MacBook so I I think that um this is a great option for anyone with the 12-in MacBook it's a great option if you have the new 13-inch MacBook Pro without touch bar uh if you get the 13-inch MacBook Pro with touch bar uh then I would ask yourself how often you're going to be using the speed of Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 and how often you're going to be using the touch bar itself and how often you're going to be using Touch ID uh to log in as well because you're not going to get those features while it's clam shell um if you have the 15-inch MacBook Pro then I would not recommend this because the 15-inch MacBook Pro has its own dedicated graphics card and the jump up from 15 to 21.5 in is not as significant as it would be from 15 to 27 inches so if you get the 27inch model it has it does Thunderbolt 3 instead of USB 3 which makes it not compatible with the 12 point with the 12-in MacBook Pro uh it no no 12-in MacBook MacBook thank you yes too much jargon here um so the 15-inch MacBook Pro will connect over to Thunderbolt 3 and it has full speed USB 3.1 ports through USBC on the back of it so all of your USB accessories connected to the back of the 27in model will run at full speed they won't have any slowdown and it's a higher resolution 5K monitor so with the dedicated graphics card and the larger screen on the 15in I think you have to go to the 27in model to justify the purchase I think that for tweeners on the 13-in MacBook Pro depends on your usage case uh but the screen is gorgeous and the ability to connect just one cable and have that do sound and data and video and power and all of that uh is awesome uh you just sit down at your desk plug in one cable bam you're good to go everything just starts working there there isn't even a power button on the monitor there aren't even any controls on the monitor it's as simple as you could get uh dead simple and the power just comes through the monitor which is then plugged into your wall you only need that one cable and then you can keep your power adapter and USBC cable and your backpack or whatever for when you're on the go all right so what does it cost what do I have to pay out to get this thing so Apple um has been doing a discount on uh USBC accessories because of user complaints um uh with the switch to USBC so right now you can get the uh 21.5 in LG ultra fine for $524 the price is going to go up uh as of March 31st to 699 it was originally going to be January 1st of uh of 2017 but they pushed the deadline back so for $524 you get a gorgeous 4K 21.5 in screen uh it's a pretty good deal um and I think that uh if you're in the market for that size of a screen and you don't mind the concessions I think you'll be very happy with it the 27in model that just started shipping um is currently $974 when it goes up as of March 31st to its full price it'll be uh $1299.95 so good time to buy if you're on the market for these monitors they're competitively priced right now uh the 27 in has some other features that you don't get like a built-in camera and all that um and I think that that's a a pretty good option for a lot of folks too especially if you got a 15-inch MacBook Pro if you have an older Mac though don't bother you're going to be in dongle hell you're going to need adapters to plug in your Mac Pro or whatever um it's it's probably not worth it and I would you know this goes back to talking about whether Apple caters to Pro users or whatever uh keep your fingers crossed I guess that they'll do a Mac Pro update but I I don't know what to tell you I I I couldn't recommend buying one of these monitors and plugging with a bunch of dongles and stuff you're better off just getting another brand monitor diminishing returns right you you you get it you have to get all these adapters and then you wouldn't even be able to take advantage of of all its capabilities right yeah what makes these monitors great is the Simplicity of it and you've defeated the Simplicity of it if you need to go through adapter hell you know for folks that have a new Macbook Pro and they're trying to connect old monitors and they're trying to save some money okay that makes sense but if you've got an old Mac Pro and you're trying to connect this new monitor to it I think you're going to I think you're going to be unhappy right I want to take a moment and talk again about some deals we've got for you this time around I'm going to mention that we've got the 32 gig Apple TV for $109 magic keyboard for $77 Magic Mouse 2 For $52 and the magic track two for $96 so certainly there's mice keyboards and trackpads available at really good deals I also want to mention that the 64 gig Apple TV is available for $149 which is $50 off its list price and no sales tax outside New York and New Jersey so this is again through our good partners Adorama and if you go through our our website through a link that'll be in the show notes you can go and use the uh promo code AP Insider and take advantage of these deals Neil what what do you think we've got Paul Bruto asking a question about Apple's move into augmented reality as the next big thing and he's not talking about holding up the phone as much as you know holding up the phone to your face or or doing something like that as much as true augmented reality as he says with with some of the contact lenses and things like that real face recognition uh Apple watches sharing info with each other what what do you think about this kind of thing uh there's a lot of potential there um and I think it's pretty exciting and you can see some of the groundwork being with you know dual camera lenses on the iPhone 7 and some of the patents that Apple has shown interest in and uh particularly when it comes to mapping and finding locations and stuff like that um we haven't really seen Apple make a push into augmented reality um but they have admitted publicly which is strange uh for a secretive company that they're interested in it um I I think that uh what you'll see from Apple is maybe not necessarily augmented reality Hardware uh because I don't think that the technology is yet to make it something that is Sleek and attractive and uh uh that most people would want to wear um this is a lot of the issues that they were running into with the Apple watch which how do you make something fashionable and attractive that that people would want to wear well it's the glucal glass issue right right you look like a total geek um now of course you kind of look like a geek wearing airpods so what do I know but um I I think that uh you know something on your wrist uh solid piece of whatever is is easier to uh get away with uh being a little geeky as opposed to something on your face where people are looking at you when they speak to you uh then it becomes a little bit more difficult so you could look at the Snapchat approach where they have these like kind of oversized glasses and they're kind of embracing the geekiness and weirdness of it um versus Google trying to be like Sleek or whatever but it just didn't come off it just kind of made you look like a loser I think that uh when when you think about Apple and augmented reality you kind of have to throw your conventions of what augmented reality is going to be 15 20 years from now and think a little bit more shorter term and realistic in terms of uh uh what you can do with current technology we're not at a point right now where you can have traditional glasses that somebody would wear and embed all the technology in there and have them just look like normal glasses we just don't have that technology right now so you could think about applications just where you would maybe hold your phone up or look at stuff on it um and have augmented reality work that way um one of the ideas that's been put out there is that perhaps Apple will get into the virtual and real augmented reality Space by folding it into the made for iPhone program so in the same way that you can make accessories for iPhone or you can make you know game controllers or you know homekit things or whatever uh there will be a licensing program of you know made for apple arvr and it could be headsets that you plug on your head if you want to wear those it could be apps that uh allow you to interact with the world around you just by holding up your phone and looking at it um it could be things that use the dual camera setup on the iPhone 7 plus uh there's a lot of groundwork laid there for potential you know using the gyus Scopes and GPS accelerometer data and all that in your iPhone uh you could easily see where Apple could create a platform to allow people to do those sorts of things but I don't see them necessarily in the short term making a wearable device in the vein of the Apple watch for augmented reality because I don't think the Technologies there and I think it would be a failure yeah well first of all no one really wants to wear anything on their faces right and and you know contact lenses for people who don't need to wear contact lenses is also not a thing right right unless unless you're changing your eye color through colored contact lenses for some reason no one does this so but could you sell people on it if you could pack that technology into a contact lens maybe I mean but i' beant you know we're talking about we're talking about battery life we're talking about size technology forget about those things the question is what's the experience that you deliver right who whose problem are you solving and what is the job to be done right is is the job helping someone who's a technician be able to maintain or or construct whatever they're working on better because they have a diagram that's overlaid on top of their reality so they can see exactly what it should look like when they're finished or or is it about you know helping jog your memory when you're introduced to someone is it about you know what are the kinds of applications well I think the applications for augmented reality are Limitless I mean you think about how excited people were with a blank canvas of a screen on a phone or a tablet where it could turn into anything you wanted with buttons wherever you needed what have you yeah but it took us a while to figure out how to use that thing the the early early applications many of them were Recreations of applications from Palm Os or Windows CE right we had to learn what to do with this thing but when Once the app store opened yes there were a lot of failures and a lot of things that weren't uh particularly good uh but it it was the Limitless potential that that people saw that made the App Store so successful and so exciting and continues to be to this day right so take all of that blank canvas concept and apply it to the world around you and the the possibilities if the technology Works become Limitless right you could um you know uh Envision uh just think about like for example decorating a home uh pieces of furniture seeing how they would fit how they would look uh painting your walls wallpaper uh you know changing the color of things what whatever you want to do you could do entire interior design design just by having an application that would give you the ability to do that sort of thing and the technology is there currently to do it it's just not in a wearable form right there's certainly apps that you can do that with on your iPhone but imagine if you were there and could almost you know see it uh with your own eyes essentially uh trying on clothes you know imagine if there was an application where you could go to an online store and you never know how this stuff's going to fit right you just never know how it's going to fit well it has a body scan of you you stand in front of a mirror you wear these glasses and now you look and you see how the shirt's going to look on you that kind of stuff I mean there there's possibility educational yeah and that's that's actually something Levis used to do years ago Levis used to have in their physical retail stores a body scanner where you'd step in it would scan you and then place an order for custommade jeans that would actually fit exactly uh and and you talked about remembering people you know you see them it recognizes their face it goes oh that's Joe you know you know them from here it gives you little things that you can quickly access without having to pull out a phone or look or check something you know uh uh all kinds of applications think about for like educational purposes is if you were to visit uh uh ruins of a city or something you could have it be virtually brought back to life in front of you you could see what it was like I mean it's so exciting and there's so much potential for augmented reality that uh any company that is into technology and advancing it would be interested in augmented reality I mean the potential is Limitless and we haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to things like games and all that so I think that you know obviously it makes sense for Apple to be looking to augmented reality obviously uh they see something there because I think anybody who has the foresight to see what technology is capable of can see the Limitless potential of augmented reality the form that it takes is the question how do you get to that place where it's a contact lens or you know if you want to go Black Mirror on this a chip implanted in the back of your head or something like that you know how do we get to that point where it becomes a seamless experience where um you are not looking like a total dork for using it that's a very good question I don't hate the answers yet you want to move on to another question uh we have another one on Twitter here from Darren Maine and he wants to know is it worth the upgrade from The Watch series one to series two uh I don't want to correct you Darren because perhaps you worded the question properly but um uh my assumption here is that you're thinking of the first generation Apple watch and uh this gives me an opportunity to kind of as opposed to the confusingly named series one yeah so what happened was when the new Apple watch came out this fall Apple launched three new models um basically I mean if you want to get into you know the camic they launched two and a half new models well the ceramic one if you wanted to count that as its own model I suppose uh the the the new edition which is not you know I'm counting series one as a half new model fair enough um but then there's also the Apple watch sport uh or I'm sorry the nikee Apple watch so here's your lineup Apple watch first generation launched in April of 2015 is no more it is not being sold by Apple if you can find it at the store it's heavily discounted it's a it's a essentially a dead product that doesn't mean that um just destroyed the resale value of my new inbox first person it does not mean that you should be unhappy with your first generation Apple watch it just means that Apple realized the processor was too slow and they moved on so they released two different variants this here they have the series one watch which has a faster dual core processor um essentially the same chip that's in the series 2 watch it just lacks GPS and it lacks the waterproofing uh I thought it was a wait a minute correct me because I thought it was a single core version of the same board that's in series 2 I believe it's a dual core chip all right carry on let me look and check I don't have the series one watch but the reason I say all this is because I believe that this question being asked by Darren he's referring to the first gener last year's watch because a lot of people think that the series one is they just discounted the price of last year's model but they did not it's a new board so if you read it's a s1p it's a dual core processor but it's not the S2 it's a new variant of the S1 called the s1p that's a dual core processor I see that and then the S2 who knows what the difference is I guess they're faster but you know with with this weird branding that Apple does that's just the way it is uh the series 2 has built-in GPS and it's water resistant uh 50 m the brand new series 1 is not water resistant it is Splash resistant so you could shower with it but you wouldn't want to swim with it basically right other than that the watches are uh large of the same the um second generation one has a twice as bright screen uh the series 2 versus the series 1 um and then when you get in the rest of the lineup they have the same internal Hardware as the series 2 so the Nike Apple watch has a uh S2 processor waterproof uh GPS all that um and then the high-end uh uh stainless steel and ceramic Edition versions uh have the same uh screen and and uh processing power and all that kind of stuff so if you have a series one should you get a series two no if you have a first generation should you get a series two maybe if you're an outdoor Runner I think so yeah and if you're not an outdoor Runner or a swimmer don't bother wait for next Generation The Watch os3 upgrade uh makes a huge difference in performance and you're not going to notice that big of a difference uh switching to the series 2 it certainly is faster but it's not worth your $400 to get it faster okay good answer all right well let's go to our next question uh Dan rer wanted some info about vpns and popup blockers actually okay um what do you know about popup blockers um I don't really have a lot of problems with popups uh per se um and I'm I'm I don't support ad blockers um we've talked about this before just because I run a website and we make our money from free content with ads on it so uh you know I I would hope that folks would consider allowing ads when they go to Apple Insider wrong person to ask that's the uh that's the um how we make money but uh and how I pay my bills but um when it comes to VPN I I did mention it on the podcast last week and I'll mention it again um I tried out an app while I was in Mexico so I could use HBO GO or HBO now whichever it is called tunnel bear and uh was extremely pleased uh very simple UI uh transparent pricing very fair it was $4 for unlimited data for a month um super easy to use um I really was happy with it so uh if you want to try VPN uh on your iPhone or iPad um the experience was uh fantastic you just tapped what country you wanted to appear that you were coming from it uh would automatically uh enable the VPN settings on iOS and you were good to go and I could stream the content and I was extremely happy with it so tunnel bear comes highly recommended if you have any pop-up blockers or ad blockers you can recommend Victor that would let you decide on that uh so tunnel bear is a very popular one and it has been for years I I've also used private internet access which is a VPN service and works on iPhone and on Mac and uh nordvpn is another one that I'm trying out the the question that you need to ask yourself is what you're using a VP for and what you hope to get out of it are you trying to obate traffic from uh your your local connection and local provider are you trying to to make sure that your data as you go across the Internet isn't logged what what what are you trying to really do are you trying to prevent yourself from being exposed at a coffee shop kind of thing where people can sniff your your data that way um it it depends on the threat model and you know if your threat model is you're trying to avoid being hacked by three-letter government agencies determined to get it you I have no advice whatsoever because I just don't know how to do that and I don't know how to make a good recommendation but if if you're trying to increase your privacy and increase your security of data through encrypting your traffic using a VPN as a decent answer finding a VPN provider that has a policy of keeping zero logs is a good idea um how you decide that you can trust them for having a zero logs policy is another question and that's another one that I don't have a good answer to but for example both nordvpn and and private internet access VPN both say or Pia VPN both say that they have zero logs policies so uh that's where I would uh begin looking and I really don't have good information about pop-up blockers because popup aren't a problem I've experienced in a few years uh for whatever reason the sites that I go to don't really have popups the uh the the using just Safari as it ships from Apple I haven't had that as a big issue I've had a few times where it's been an annoyance and in that case I force quit Safari and and reopen and don't open the windows that cause those problems I I'm sorry that's not a better answer well Neil on that note let's have a resounding end to episode 100 of the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you on the internet uh you can read my stuff on appleinsider.com and you can follow me on Twitter at this is Neil NE L and I'm your host Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter and this has been the Apple Insider podcast and if Neil decides that he wants to upgrade from a series 1 watch to a series 3 watch we'll tell you all about it sometime in the future on the Apple Insider podcast thank you very much everybody and please feel free to leave reviews on iTunes we hope they're positive ones but we totally understand if you aren't we read all the comments we read all the reviews we really care about what you guys think and we hope that you enjoy listening so please feel free to reviews and we'll see you next week\n"