**Apple's Vision for GPGPU Support: A Mixed Bag**

In recent weeks, Apple has made several announcements that have left many enthusiasts and developers scratching their heads. During WWDC, Apple showcased their new MacBook Pro with an integrated eGPU port, but there are some significant caveats to this feature.

One of the main limitations of this feature is that it only supports external displays, not internal ones. This means that users who want to take full advantage of the eGPU's capabilities will need to connect an external display, such as a monitor or VR headset, in order to use the high-performance graphics card. Apple has stated that this is due to the fact that High Sierra does not support internal displays with eGPU support.

For developers who are interested in using GPGPU for applications like VR and 3D modeling, this limitation can be frustrating. However, it's worth noting that Apple seems to have deliberately designed the eGPU port for VR development specifically. The demo they showed at WWDC used an HTC Vive headset as a secondary display, which is a clever way to demonstrate the capabilities of the eGPU without having to rely on external displays.

Despite this limitation, there are still many potential uses for eGPU support in macOS. For example, professionals who need high-performance graphics cards for tasks like video editing and 3D modeling may find that an integrated eGPU port is a game-changer. Similarly, gamers who want to take full advantage of the latest graphics cards without having to lug around a separate GPU will appreciate the convenience of having the eGPU port built into their MacBook Pro.

However, not everything about Apple's vision for GPGPU support is clear-cut. While they seem to have made significant strides in supporting VR development on macOS, there are still many unanswered questions about how they plan to implement self-driving cars and other advanced technologies using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Apple has stated that they are working on these technologies, but so far, there have been few concrete details about their plans or timelines.

**The Importance of Enthusiasts in Apple's Ecosystem**

One area where Apple is actively engaging with enthusiasts is in the development of HomeKit. While HomeKit has its limitations, Apple seems to be taking a pragmatic approach to its development, recognizing that it needs to balance its core vision with the needs and desires of users who are passionate about their technology. By providing tools and resources for enthusiasts to tinker with HomeKit, Apple is essentially giving them a foot in the door.

Similarly, Apple's wearable business is seen as a way to get a foothold in the market without fully committing to it. While smartwatches like the Apple Watch are popular among consumers, they also serve as a way for Apple to experiment with new technologies and features that may eventually make their way into other products. By having enthusiasts try out these products and provide feedback, Apple can refine its approach and move towards more mainstream adoption.

**Future Developments: What to Expect**

In the coming days, we can expect to see more reviews of Apple's latest hardware, including the MacBook Pro with eGPU support, as well as reviews of the iPad Pros 10.5 and 12.9. We'll also be covering all the new features and technologies that were announced at WWDC, from iOS 11 beta 1 to watchOS.

While we don't know what Apple has in store for its car business, one thing is certain: the company will continue to push the boundaries of innovation and technology. Whether it's GPGPU support on Mac or advanced features like augmented reality capabilities, Apple is always looking for ways to improve user experience and stay ahead of the curve.

**Conclusion**

Apple's vision for GPGPU support in macOS is a mixed bag, with some exciting possibilities for developers and enthusiasts, but also some significant limitations. While there are still many unanswered questions about Apple's plans for self-driving cars and other advanced technologies, it's clear that the company is committed to innovation and pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

By engaging with enthusiasts through platforms like HomeKit and wearable technology, Apple can refine its approach and get feedback from users who are passionate about their products. As we look ahead to future developments and announcements, one thing is certain: Apple will continue to be at the forefront of technological innovation and user experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Neil Hughes welcome back Neil Victor how's it going pretty well how are you doing doing all right doing all right good and I hope all of our listeners are too so it's been a little while since I last talked to you and in that time I know that that I've installed iOS 11 you've installed iOS 11 and you've got a load of new devices around that you're trying it out on so why don't we Dive Right In and start by talking about some of those devices that you've got in front of you well let me clarify um I'm only running iOS 11 on two devices the new hardware um that we've been reviewing um is we review it as is out of the box so okay so for example a 10.5 in iPad you're running the OS that it comes with the iOS 10 103.3 or whatever it is yeah right because that's the fair way to review it at this time right that's how it comes that's how people are going to experience it out of the box that's the right way to look at it right MH okay so then let me ask um I'm going to separate this out first of all let's talk about the 10.5 in iPad what's what's your experience like with it out of the box um so the 10.5 in iPad is really nice I'm working on the review right now um and it may actually be up by the time people are listening to this so be sure to go to Apple Insider and check out my full review um I have been a proponent of the 12.9 in iPad for a couple years now since it launched in late 2015 um and the 9.7 in was just a little too small um this 10.5 I think is a much better form factor of the 9.7 uh they accomplish this by reducing the bezel somewhat it's not entirely reduced they're still a little bit on the sides and more on the top and bottom but uh the 10.5 in um is just a good size uh in terms of the onscreen keyboard and just the real estate that you have to really take advantage of it going from the 12.9 back to the 9.7 always felt kind of cramped um so I I really like the form factor I still prefer the larger size for what I use my tablet for but I think for a lot of people they're going to be very happy with this especially because the bezel size was reduced so it's not that much bigger than a 9.7 in your hand it doesn't really feel bigger you put them side by side and you can see the difference but it just really feels like the same size and just a little bit more space on the screen uh easier to type the keyboard is just that that little much bigger um I wait I I want to ask how is the keyboard because this was the thing that they said during the worldwide developer conference keynote was that this was the device that was the right size to be able to have a full screen fulls siiz onscreen keyboard yeah it's just big enough to to have a full-size virtual keyboard so in the 9.7 in it's a little undersized which makes it a little tricky typing on the 12.9 obviously you have plenty of real estate and they can even have a virtual number row which I love uh this is not the same doesn't have the full number row and all that um but it does have full size equivalent virtual keys on the screen uh which does make typing easier uh if you're a touch typist like me um It's relatively easy to type on an iPad screen um and this offers kind of the best of of all worlds with the full size but you can also hold it in portrait mode and and do the split keyboard with your thumbs and stuff like that I mean it's really uh pretty awesome in terms of Versatility so what's your word per minute like oh I don't know whatever I I I I haven't checked it but it's I mean it's fast I don't I don't look at the keyboard like I don't use the backlight on my keyboard or anything like that um it's not I I I've been typing for a very long time I write for a living so okay well I mean I uh I've been typing for a very long time but I've never done formal typing practice and so I type it about 50 words per minute mhm um what I like about using using the 12-in iPad I have yet to experience the 10.5 but with the 12-in iPad and Landscape I I can touch type about as well as I type with uh a traditional keyboard mhm yeah where with the 9.7 in I would I would be feeling cramped and I would miss keys and things like that the the thing that I know is that for a lot of people who write for a living who use the iPad Pro as their computer that they prefer the 9.7 because it fits so well in a bag right yeah the the the 12.9 is it's it's big um 9.7 10.5 you know with with the size change on the bezels and stuff this is equivalent people are going to be very happy you're getting a good amount more real estate diagonally Without Really adding to the size of the device you you're not really going to notice the device unless you're hold them side by side it's the same weight um this is a very good compromise that that Apple made with the little bit extra size here um to get you know having that full-size virtual keyboard makes a big difference obviously I can't type as fast on a virtual keyboard as I can on a physical keyboard there are more mistakes but if I'm not sitting down and you know writing more in peace and I'm just you know responding to something doing an email whatever um you know it's just it's that much better when you have the keyboard but really the size difference is is nice but really the main difference with these iPads that makes them kind of a a must must have in my eye uh and the reason that I'm personally considering now upgrading my 12.9 in to the latest model uh despite some frustrations with some of the changes is um the the new what they call the promotion display uh is absolutely amazing it runs 120z 120 HZ display yes yeah and like as soon as you turn this thing on and start going through you know the setup process and it just jumping in between the menus is like it it's just a very big difference it's a noticeable difference right off the bat um you just it's fluid when you switch between uh app home screens when you're scrolling when you're reading all that like you don't even it's one of those things that you don't even realize like almost like before we had re displays we had these low resolution displays it was like oh this is a great screen and you don't realize that it could be better until you get a r display and then you're like oh and then you can't go back I feel almost the same way not quite the same way but almost the same way about the 120 htz display um you you notice it when you go back to a screen that doesn't have it the scrolling and and the zooming and and all that kind of stuff um and not just a visual benefit from this but also uh responsiveness for the apple pencil um is more fluid because of this um higher uh Hertz on the display it just the the frame rate uh is buttery smooth it is stunning it stands out it gets your attention and it looks great so your your verdict is is yeah you're you're thinking strongly about upgrading to the 10.5 in from the 12.9 no I'm I'm going think about upgrading my 12.9 from the 2015 model to the current model now um my reasons for wanting to do that are mostly because of the display uh oh and the new processor is really fast but it's like the last one was that slow but I mean the benchmarks on this thing like rival and MacBook Pro it's crazy it's I mean it's unbelievable how fast they've made these custom processors in here they're they're getting to another level I mean nobody's in the same level when it comes to to competing with with the iPad nobody none of these tablets out there are really in the same playing field it's it's crazy there are a few caveats and um I'm I'm a little frustrated by it um the biggest one for me is especially with the 12.9 in model you're going to drop $800 on this tablet right and it's powerful and it's capable and it's awesome and it has usb3 uh data and charging speeds on the lightning port and it ships with a 12 wat brick the same the same power brick that you know shipped with the first iPad 7 years ago um even though that's that's like the iPad Mini shipping with the 1 amp phone charger brick it I'm not really sure where Apple did this I think I think that the reason that they did it is because they don't want to make a new USB 3 power brick with a full-size USB port and the 29 watt uh brick that or you know I guess plug whatever you want to call it not really a brick but uh the one that comes with the Transformer if you will yes the the 29 watt adapter that ships with the 12-in MacBook doesn't have a fullsize USB port it has USBC so my theory on this is that apple didn't want consumers who buy a new iPad to freak out when it comes with a USBC to lightning cable and they don't want to make a new power brick with fullsize USB because that would be kind of going backwards so they're kind of between a rock and a hard not at all not at all they they just are they also don't want to have to put one more thing in the Box well I I have I regularly use a USBC to usba adapter my my my USB phone is a my USBC phone is a Huawei Nexus 6p which does fast charging over USBC which is a brilliant thing and the power brick for it has just like Apple's a USBC connector on it and sometimes I don't want to charge the the Huawei sometimes I want to charge other things and so I have a USBC to usba adapter belon makes them there are tons of reliable companies that make them and you just plug that into your USBC adapter and then you plug plug in your USB cable usba cable and it works just fine and I think that the USB connector is the reason that we're not getting the 29 watt charger because Apple doesn't want to ship it with a dongle and they realize that a lot of people are still charging their iPads through their computer I mean I'm sure they have market research that shows X number of people are doing this are they I would like to know that or or they have multiple power bricks that they use or whatever there's some reason that they cheaped out with the 12w adapter but you got to realize um the new the new iPads are more powerful than ever right they've got these souped up processors in there that are crazy and they shrink all the components in there so they can fit in larger batteries so the larger 12.9 in iPad Pro went from a 39w hour battery to like a 41w hour battery and this thing takes forever to charge on a 12 wat adap I know it takes forever plug it in and you wait overnight yeah I mean it and you know it gets 10 hours of battery life and the idling is fine all okay great this thing needs to be shipped with a 29 wat adapter and the fact that Apple didn't do it really ticks me off because the the Brick itself is $50 and then the cable if you want to get the USBC to lightning cable is under 25 bucks so I spent $800 on an iPad Pro I want to uh or 650 on the 10.5 in model which is $50 more than it was last year now I got to spend another 75 bucks if I want to charge it at the faster rate uh put it in the Box Apple I mean let's let's just move on and stop cheaping out with this stuff shipping it with a 12wt adapter is absolutely inexcusable and very frustrating to me and I think an oversight by Apple and it's really the the only major ding I have against a product that is otherwise pretty great I mean pretty much Flawless Hardware the only problem I can find with this Hardware is the stupid camera bump like do we really need a you know a 12 megapixel camera with flash on a tablet like who's taking these photos with their tablet just put a flush camera in there make it 8 megapixel no iPad Pro like you're holding up the boom box as John cusac did right that's that's exactly what's going on here is people are videotaping and filming events by holding this thing up above their heads right I like that it has the camera on there but it doesn't need to be that powerful of a camera you can skimp out a little bit there and put the stupid right adapter in the box with the right power Brak that that's my only problem with this Hardware here and it's even more egregious with the 12.9 in model because it at $800 to not be able to include a 29 watt adapter in there for this huge battery it's got to recharge I mean they at least should put it in with the 12.9 in model the fact that it ships with a 12 watt adapter is is insane to me and I think that I'm going to give the 12.9 in uh model a slightly lower score than the um than the 10.5 in model pretty much solely because of that because that that you know when it takes your tablet overnight to charge it's it's inexcusable it's it's it's that's a bad user experience and there's no need for it to ship like that out of the box it's not like these cables and bricks are costing Apple that much that it's going to eat in their margins to ship it in the Box for them I think that that is the main issue with the 12.9 it's not it's not even the tablet itself it's just the accessories that they ship in the box and it's a shame that they do it that way so you think about $800 for the tablet 160 for the keyboard 100 for the pencil and then another 75 for the cable and brick you got a really awesome setup there but you spent over a, bucks on it um it's getting a little pricey at that point but I mean I think it's worth it I think it's a great product I'm I'm very happy with this update um I think that they did a really good job with it but just stop cheaping out on the Brick Apple now wait does does for my own clarification does the 10.5 in work with USBC and and and the the the USB three fast charging yes so this is something that happened that was strange there were a lot of differences between the 12.9 in model and the 10 point or the 9.7 that came out uh last year in late 2015 so the 12.9 in came out first it features USB 3 uh 29 wat fast charging um but it and it had a M9 chip but for some reason did not include always on hey I won't say her name um she who El shall not be named is that well cuz everything's going to turn on if I do it um then the next year 2016 early in the year they shipped the 9.7 in model they did have hey you know who uh always on without being plugged in um even though it had the same processor which made no sense to me it gained the uh true tone display which the 12.9 in did not have but it did not gain the USB 3 lightning Port it only had the usb2 lightning Port which means it didn't have the Quick Charge capabilities which wasn't that big of a deal because it's got a smaller battery um you know you plug that in on the the 12 watt it charges slower but it it's fine it doesn't need it doesn't need as much to to Juice It Up uh but this year both iPad Pros have been released at the same time both have feature parody so they both have the same processor uh they both have the same cameras uh they both have true tone displays now which is new for the 12.9 in they both have the 120 HZ Pro motion display and they both have usb3 lightning connectors for fast charging if you want to pay 75 bucks to get it okay thank you for laying that all out for me yes so your personal preference is to get the 12in and the 10 in is a strong the 10 and 1 half is a strong Contender for people who have the 9.7 in I think most people uh will be very happy with the 9 or with a 10.5 in I think that some size of iPad at this point right oh yeah I I mean I think that the 10.5 is going to be the compromises that they made to get to the larger dis Sizer are not that big of a deal the the the funny thing to me is the the thing that undercuts the iPad Pro more than anything is the $330 9.7 in iPad because a lot of people buying these tablets aren't going to connect to keyboard don't want to spend $100 on the mouse don't want to spend another $75 to fast charge They Don't Really Care pencil they don't care about the 120 HZ display they don't uh care that this display is not laminated the glass they don't care that it's a little bit thicker because you get basically everything that you would need the the A9 chip is plenty fast uh that $330 is packed with value and for $650 on a 10.5in iPad Pro uh the value is not quite as packed and I think that the main thing that undercuts and makes it really the standout device in Apple's lineup is that at 330 bucks uh that thing is a is a bargain it's a Ste I I think that I think that that is the the greatest value currently in Apple's entire product lineup let me ask a question yes because this is something I had not previously thought about so you take that $330 iPad yeah you put iOS 11 on it does it gain the dock and the multitasking capabilities that we saw demonstrated in the keynote all of it say what all of it tell me one more time it gets all of it I installed iOS 11 on an iPad Air 2 that I have here and it works great it's awesome awesome really really the $330 iPad is the best value in Apple's product line that was that was one of the things that that in the past you know some of them got the uh the the slide over where you could have the iPhone app running in a strip alongside but you couldn't pull it all the way and have two evenly spaced out iPad apps running side by side and uh you got an A9 processor with 2 gigs of RAM and it handles it all be yep you can multitask you can split view you can slide over you get the DOT you get all of it huh yeah so then then Conn and if you don't want the SMART connector which it's not like there's any SMART connector accessories available other than keyboards connect a Bluetooth keyboard um get a Bluetooth stylus if you really want something to draw with I mean there are compromises made obviously to get to that $330 price point but that is so cheap compared to you think about when the iPad first launch it was 500 bucks now the the pro is 650 we're down to 330 with a with a 9.7 in screen the the the iPad Pro is a great buy for the people that want to take advantage of the features on it somebody like me who really likes you know the larger screen and and likes the the 120 HZ display and the SMART connector all that kind of stuff great but for most people they don't even need the 10.5 in just get the 9.7 inch wow the entry level iPad is the way to go for a lot of people and I think that that's gonna be I think it's gon to Bear out in the sales too that is something that is really quite something okay but it's a great lineup that they have right now if you think about it you know a lot of differentiation at the different price points to justify um where they're at I think that the the and with iOS 11 coming uh the iPad is in a very strong position right now much better than it's been in years well so we should talk about that we iOS 11 changes things for iPad more drastically than it does for some of the other devices right it's the biggest change ever for iPad yeah you you get a doc and we haven't had a doc on iOS before the doc is divided into two sections it's the applications that are are Main Stays across one side of it and the other is predictive things where uh Apple sort of decides what they think is going to come next it includes things like handoff and and other stuff in there right MH and long pressing on these things can uh can can show Windows of what's available there it can also help you with your your files as you're uh or Dragon drop and dragon drop uh starting the slide over stuff you can actually do four tasks at once uh on the screen at the same time with iOS 11 even on a 9.7 in so let's let's count first of all you get split view which is two apps right mhm and then you can float another view on top using the slide over style right and if you have the 12.9 in iPad Pro I don't know if you can do this on the 10. 5 because I didn't update iOS 11 but uh if you have the 12.9 you can still interact with the apps that are in the background in addition to the slide over one and then if you throw in picture and picture uh that's four apps at once your your counting video is running as a as a separate app there correct because well it is so okay that's that's impressive and then obviously you know things like location music and whatever could run in the background too so you could run more than four apps at once but you can have four apps on screen at once and it doesn't feel cluttered or weird or excessive wow now let me ask this can you I I have the feeling that with these big changes that there's going to be need to the need for some tutorials on on how these things work how does drag and drop work how does markup work yeah when you take a screenshot right do you think that Apple's going to supply some of these these um things to help people learn about them I mean I think so you can see that they're doing you know classes throughout the day at their retail stores now um obviously there's the tips app that's installed on iOS devices um you know and when who knows what it'll be like when it actually ships but you know uh I'm sure that they'll have stuff on their website and obviously we'll have stuff on Apple Insider but the important thing to remember when it comes to any of these features that are being added is these platforms get more mature is the power user features never take away the Simplicity of the platform platform um you can navigate an iPhone quite well without ever knowing that control center exists and the only thing that you would miss out on is other than the convenience of having it there is the built-in flashlight because there's no other way to access in the operating system but you could download an app to do that too so um it's important that as you add power user features you don't take away the Simplicity of how to do these things you still have a dedicated Settings app that you can dig into if you want to turn off Bluetooth and go into airplan mode and whatever um and that's how you move a platform forward without alienating the users that appreciate the Simplicity and have gotten used to it I will say that one of the things that I was slightly disappointed by was that I I enjoyed using the uh the the flicking action in the multitasking view yeah to quit apps to dismiss applications and in iOS 11 on iPad that's no longer the behavior you have to long press tap on X in a corner to dismiss an application I agree with you but it's important that people remember that this is beta and things can and will change before launch so if you're testing the beta um and you're a registered developer um Apple encourages people to send feedback and so if you don't like that change I would say send send a message to Apple but I agree with you um being able to quickly close apps is something that is currently missing uh in beta 1 one thing that is great though with the multitasking view um um is you can have apps that are done in split view are in a permanent state so for example if I have uh one task open that is split between Safari and slack uh I then multitask to another uh combination of music and calendar uh both in split view they they remain persistent in that state so when you go back to the other app it remembers that you have those two paired together it's pretty cool yeah now these this is something that on on Apple they've always called this a spaces in Mac OS 10 and Mac OS it's called spaces it's really an implementation of a concept that's been around for decades called virtual desktops and you know on on traditional computers you'd arrange your applications the way you'd like on a virtual desktop and then switch to a new desktop or a new space as Apple calls it and arrange new applications and this is the first time that it's come to iPad what's cool about this as you say is that they remember which applications are in a space or in a virtual desktop just as they do on the the traditional computer uh you know this was something we were doing in Unix God 20 years ago 30 well 25 years ago and we're doing in BOS 20 years ago um the I I you know I keep slack and messages in the same space because they're both messaging applications and I do that on on iOS 11 just as well as I do it in uh Mac OS and there are still some things about what happens to an application when it's been placed alongside another one in split view or in slide over mode in a space on iOS 11 that's that's I think a symptom of it being still beta 1 um for example when I start using messaging apps in messages but messages is that small strip of a a slide overview yeah I I lose the keyboard and I lose the uh the the messages app area takes up the whole bottom width of the landscape view uh overriding slack it's it's uh there's something that they have to still work out about um this the space that things should take when they're in a different type of view yeah that's one thing that especially with a 12.9 in that I would like to see improved in multitasking and I don't think we'll get it this year obviously since iOS 11 is anounced but maybe a iOS 12 type thing is uh especially if you're holding the device in um like a portrait mode um and you slide or do a split view with an app um given how tall the screen is you get this very awkward long skinny you know whatever it is for that app and for some for some apps that might look fine but for a lot of them it's a lot of real estate that's really not necessary what would be nice to see is something that operates like a combination of slide over with um the way that picture and picture works so imagine that if you were able to slide over um an app uh like let's say messages would be a great one um you could slide it over but it would float in the corners and you could resize it as bigger or smaller but it wouldn't have to take up the entire uh height of the screen um it would be in more of a iPhone size so you know like uh 169 box that sits in the bottom right corner you can drag it over the bottom left corner and it stays in a persistent State on top of the screen as you jump between apps so imagine that you were in a conversation with somebody and messages or slack or whatever you have it on the bottom left of your screen you hit the home button it's still kind of sitting over there you can float it and move it as needed when you're reading and moving around you can pull up two apps at once and it still stays you know floating over there just like the picture and picture mode works I think that would be a really great multitasking addition yeah but so to to tie it together right to bring this to to ahead Apple said for years that we were in the post-pc world that was the Steve Jobs line we were in the post PC era uh Tim Cook has repeatedly said that the iPad is their vision of computing in the future it's their clearest vision of what Computing should be and I would say that this this what they've shown us so far with iOS 11 delivers on that promise would you agree yes we still have a long way to go but the improved multitasking the uh addition of a file app un Universal you know to save your files and access them between apps and stuff like that um make a huge difference the doc uh switching between apps all that kind of stuff uh it's a huge difference but I think that the last missing piece is some form of a cursor input for text manipulation um yeah and and there's been you know there there have been people who've said that holding the your finger down on the keyboard and that turns it into cursor input selection is is the answer to that uh I would I would agree with you that there's still some room for refinement there but I would be more than okay with mouse and trackpad input that comes with the caveat that no apps on the app store or native can require it because touch has to be the primary mode of input for this you can attach a keyboard if you want but you don't need a keyboard you could connect a pointer accessory of some type if you want but you don't need it same with pencil same with everything else as long as the core functionality of the product continues to work who does it hurt if we add it in h it does sound it does feel like retrograde in some ways though well I I saw an interesting concept A few weeks ago before iOS 11 was announced where people were talking about what would happen if they had a trackpad on the new U magic or um yeah yeah that was a grber thing he was talking about yeah and and the idea was um do it like it is on tvos so rather than having a physical pointer on the screen um if you're on the home screen using a trackpad uh the app icons would you know it would go between them as you dragged your finger around it would select different ones as you moved around yeah right and and that would make some sense I mean I could see that working but it doesn't change the fact that you would still need some form of just specific cursor input for text entry interesting uh you could do that just as the same way that you use the keyboard on screen with with the TV remote selecting letters mhm yeah and and let's not forget that you know Apple has caved on things like they originally said your games cannot require a controller and then they said okay if you want to make a game that requires a controller go for it um and you know remember when you couldn't use the volume button to take pictures or you could say that they caved on having a stylus right you could say so when when we talk about them caving it's that's that's when I go back to what is their vision for the future what is what's their real goal here right and their real goal was for people to replace place the computer with the iPad and for some professionals especially digital artists uh when you're saying that the iPad is a wonderful tablet for drawing you can't tell them that and then not give them a pen right you know the the the we will n if you see a stylist they've failed was saying that if you see a stylist for inputting text and for tapping on icons it's a failure not if you see a stylist for doing digital artwork it's a failure right so they knew that they needed to have one in order to get to the vision of this thing being the tool for Professionals for digital artists as professionals let's say um do they need to have a trackpad for that to Work N it depends let's see what we're talking about in terms of tasks and jobs to be done right when when we talk about the other things that they've backpedal on uh you know when when they said this is the very best camera that's in your pocket but you don't have a shutter button you have an on screen visual one so now you have to look at the screen as opposed to your subject or or you know you can't take your photo nearly as fast because you have to find and tap on the right area of the screen uh using the volume key was the right answer mhm it's it's it's not about drawing a firm Line in the Sand and saying we'll never do that it's about figuring out is this something that has to be done in order to get to the goal right what is Apple's goal here what are we actually trying to accomplish who are doing it for and what do we need need to do and if that involves backpedaling so be it I I've been saying for years now here on the podcast you know Apple needs to take the training wheels off of the iPad that the hardware is there the software needs to catch up this is a huge leap forward for the software huge if if the $330 iPad does all that you say then then haven't they just done that aren't the training wheels falling off now they are yeah I I there's still a ways to go but it's a huge step in the right direction absolutely I am impressed I want to change gears completely and I I'm going to go ahead and bring this up because we were just talking about Apple's vision and what they're trying to accomplish let's talk about homepod so I I I I bring this up because I've I've been looking at for a long time the different types of voice speakers that are Voice Assistant speaker products that are out there Alexa products Amazon Echo products the Google Home Products um the different voice assistants you know Viv that turned into Bixby or Viv that got bought by Samsung who released Bixby I'm still not entirely certain that Viv is the basis for Bixby um things like this and I like the idea of a voice assistant so they introduced this speaker and they're calling at homepod and they emphasize its music features first and oh by the way it has series second and that was interesting uh the other thing that's interesting is they they the 349 price tag right Which is far higher than Alexa or Google home so what is the vision what is what is Apple's goal by introducing this thing you know maybe it's a a backdoor way into putting Siri in your home in a you know more permanent way the that they're pitching it as more of a music device than a Siri device and I think that makes sense for a number of reasons namely the price for $350 they can't say this is an echo competitor they have to talk about how they differentiate it and I think that having a premium speaker has a market I don't know how big that market is but um for somebody like myself who is a big fan of AirPlay and has speakers throughout my home to listen to music I think it's a great product um and uh I I really like that you know the iPod Hi-Fi was an earlier stab at this and largely a failure um I own one and it was a great product but the market for it wasn't that big people really didn't see a need and this product may do the same thing I don't know how it's going to pan out for them but I'm excited for it because I want uh some form of an echo competitor that is not you know listening for what I want to buy on Amazon and I want a great speaker so yeah well so there there are a couple of things to unpack here I I think the first thing is that there are a limited number of of companies that can sell an audio product for 350 bucks Y and if I had to name them I'd say their names are Bose Bowers and Wilkins beats um Sonos Sonos and and I start to run out of answers after that don't I yeah I mean there's some other Niche like I have my master Dynamic headphones that I love Master Dynamic lione libratone is pretty good in there right they they can do it senis uh uh n no they make Studio headphones they make okay cans but they don't make speakers not really um um oh who was that weird one that Mikey reviewed that I saw in the New York airport oh um they have a store in SoHo here too actually near the Apple Store it's called uh they sell it at the Apple Store too I think it's crazy yeah uh I can't think the name of it right now but yeah it's um devet Phantom that's the devet that thing is it's awesome uh it's absurd it's beautiful and it's great but yeah yeah I mean that's that's super Niche that's beyond Niche that's 10 people in the world own one exactly um right so I I have not used all the fingers on two hands yet is is how far we've come and we've run out of people who can do that so the question is is first of all can apple do it after having failed the last time around Grant I grant you that was 10 years ago right that was that was uh 10 or 11 years ago it was 2008 basically so and and second of all so who who are the people that are supposed to buy this they're not Sonos users they're Apple music users right there are 27 million Apple music subscribers so what percentage of that do they think they're going to sell this thing to you know how how do you measure success on something like this right I mean we look at the iPhone and obviously that's a colossal success um but then you start to go further down Apple's product lineup and it's like uh you know the iPad sales are down but they're still moving 10 million in a quarter that's pretty impressive um you know Apple watch they're not announcing numbers but even if they're selling two or three million in a in a quarter that's a pretty good number um they just refresh the MacBook Air the the outgoing non retina the 13in because they want to maintain that you know sub $1,000 price how many of those are they selling I mean they're selling four 5 million Max in a quarter are they selling $500 ,000 MacBook airs are they selling 200,000 MacBook airs I don't know um how many of these do they need to sell with the homep Pod do they need to sell half a million do they need to sell 5 million do they need to sell you know I I don't know how you consider it to be a success because I don't know that it really matters that much um I think that as long as the product does what it aims to do um and can you know the bean counters at Apple I think that we don't need to worry about the success of it that much I think it's going to be fine I think there's a built-in audience of you know probably a million people they're going to buy this thing no matter what and apple continue to make it and it'll kind of be one of their Niche products you know it'll be something off in the corner at the Apple Store I I don't see this being this isn't this product isn't that big of a deal for most so so when you say they can sell a million units that's fine what I'm thinking is that's probably just a an extrapolation of scale because when I was making products years ago I used to say look we can sell 50,000 units of anything to nerds right you you you can make some off-the-wall wacky thing that barely even functions and sell 50,000 of them it's it's getting past that and selling to to people who are on the other side of the early adoption curve that is the difficult thing so that's your hund that's that's your million units is that Apple can sell a million of these things to anyone just because they're apple and they're that big the question I have is is so what's their vision for this thing is their Vision to sell it to their apple music subscribers to listen to Apple music through is their Vision that this thing is the missing piece of the puzzle in homekit um is is this the thing that fixes AirPlay for multiroom what what what's what's the purpose of this thing and why are they making it other than you know someone convinced Tim Cook that they wanted to make music stuff again I think all the above I think that uh it's a space that they wanted to get into because they don't want to get pushed out by Amazon um they need to offer something that competes there's clearly a market for it I don't think that they necessarily know what it's going to become they're they're marketing it as a speaker because that justifies the price but we may see two years down the road a you know home pod Nano that cost $99 and doesn't have the same sound quality but does you know or whatever um we may see you know a high-end um homepod Pro for all we know I mean who knows where this product goes but I think if you look at the success that they've had with the Apple watch that might give you an idea of their ability to kind of uh pivot and focus on what's working and diminish what is not workking um I think that that's but that's precisely what concerns me is because the Apple launch launched the the Apple watch rather launched without a a super Clear Vision or statement for what the thing should do and why you should buy it right it it was it does all these things and if you hear one of those things that resonates with you then you should buy it as opposed to Apple being able to tell you clearly like they did with the iPad this is the best way to sit back and have a relaxed Computing experience was the first thing that that jobs pitched at in 2010 you know you if if homepod is another one of these things like the watch where we make this thing it does all this stuff and by the way if one of those resonates with you you might want to buy it then we've got another two years of Apple figuring out what homepod is for I mean I think my biggest problem with homepod in terms of being a big you know multi-million selling success is if I give you $350 let's imagine if the the hod is out today it's in the store I give you $350 you walk into an Apple store and I say buy one thing with this $350 what are you going to buy are you going to buy the homepod are you going to buy a 9.7 inch iPad yeah I'm saying are you going to buy a $350 Apple watch are you g to buy because I mean there are a lot of products that for that price in Apple's product lineup are way more appealing I think that an Apple Watch is more appealing to more people I think that iPad is more way more appealing to more people um so I think that you know the homep Pod is not going to be a move the needle for Apple it's just it's not that kind of product it's a speaker and I think that as long as they have that goal for it in mind um and I think that you know unlike years ago when the Hi-Fi came out um I think this is more of a storm that they could weather with enough cash in the bank that it doesn't matter and much like the Apple TV was a hobby before they launched an app store for it uh this can be a presence for them and a way for them to get their foot in the door in a market that they see becoming a bigger deal in the future but while that shakes out and while consumers continue to get comfortable with the idea of a speaker in their home you I was just watching uh um Cole bear the other night and uh um uh an actress was on there and she was talking about how uh she you know threw her Amazon Echo in the closet because she didn't like that it was constantly listening to her and her kids around the house and stuff that's a very common comment that I hear from a lot of people people are not entirely comfortable with these products and that might be one of the reasons why Apple priced it the way that they did designed it the way that they did and are marketing it the way that they are because I think that there's still a reluctance from consumers to have that sort of a product and I think that maybe they're letting the market shake out and giving it time until people get more comfortable with Siri constantly listening to you to really uh you know take the training wheels off well and they said that Siri listening to you doesn't send anything to them until you intentionally direct it to that is exactly why they made it a point to emphasize that yeah um the same reason that the Apple TV requires you to press a button on the remote for it to to talk to Siri on that Apple makes all these decisions for very conscious reason and I'm sure they have all kinds of internal market research that shows that there is a reason to do this is that good for Apple's long-term success though right one of the things we've talked about in the past is that you you to for machine learning and for uh artificial intelligence you need to have large data sets right are are they intentionally crippling themselves by take by by planting their flag on this hill I don't know um you know there were reports of people that work in AI that you know were leaving apple or were moving on to other places because they couldn't even publish their research which is a big part of you know working in machine learning and stuff like that they've since relaxed on some of that I think that Apple takes a very conservative slow approach to these things like we talked about before with the iPad and bringing in a St or the pencil and stylus all that kind of stuff and I think there's something to be said for that because um it allows us to kind of pause and think about these things and and do them in a way that's not so halfhazard and and is smart and is measured uh and done right and I think that Apple's approach is going to be okay because not only do they have the brand cach a and and people that are are buying in but it's still a a niche market it's not like it's out of hand that you know it's gone it's not like Windows phone coming to Market and trying to catch up with iOS you know like it's not like everybody's got an echo uh this is a thing that Amazon is pushing but it's still a novelty and if it becomes a thing and it becomes you know like they're selling tens of millions of them or whatever uh Apple's going to be in on the ground floor at this point well and Apple's never been afraid of being with the right product and this thing the the homepod has an A8 chip in it which is not too shabby uh presumably it's going to have capability of software updates and considering that Siri depends a lot on the cloud uh this is the kind of product that could be updated and remain relevant for years to come as the market evolves and changes and as people expect more and want more and demand more uh you could expect to see the homepod become whatever it needs to be uh in much the same way that watchos was reimagined after it was you know refocused with what people were using the product for my one thought is is that you know Google and Amazon are taking very different approaches to adoption here uh Amazon and and Google are both encouraging third party manufacturers to build their AI into third party speakers and third party products right you you know into the EOB thermostat which has Alexa built into it or the uh the hmdx Jam speaker that has Alexa built into it or the the ones that I sent you a picture of last week that have the ability to pair multiple units MH right there there's an Amazon Alexa enabled speaker that you can pair multiple units with and have multi-room audio going on um you know we're not that far away from someone like a Sonos a reputable speaker manufacturer building in the voice assistant into their good speakers right but I mean it's not it's not like the barrier for entry for Amazon Echo is high you can get a DOT for what like $60 or something you can get a DOT for 39 bucks if you have Prime and get the coupon so there you go I mean so yes is it an approach that these companies are taking by letting anybody install anything sure does it really matter I don't think so well the idea is that you don't have to necessarily end up buying a dedicated speaker unit you can buy just whatever accessories you're going to be buying anyway and oh look they all have that one assistant built in yeah I I get I I don't see that moving you uh you bought a light bulb and by the way it's got electri yeah great just what I wanted right this is like my my 4K Sony TV with Android TV on it it's like just I want to unall it I want it gone well yeah and you can't it's terrible are it's like it lags just from you navigating you are on the so you you discovered that it lags right you discovered that it's unsuitable and you don't like it but a lot of people shop with these things in mind or or shop and see that as a bonus right it's easy it's got a button on the remote it says Netflix I mean that's why they do it well and TCL that makes the uh the Amazon Fire TV they for years they made Roku TVs and had Roku built in and at CES they showed and they now selling a TV that that has the essentially an Amazon Firebox built into the TV I mean the things will get there eventually but the fact that you know you spend this kind of money on a TV and then the menu lags it's like this is crazy here's here's what the problem is right the problem is that the the cell phone is an every two-year device yeah sometimes more frequent sometimes less frequent but more or less it's an every two-year device yeah right would you agree yes okay what is your buying cycle for television five plus years closer to 10 for most people right and so do you want an Android phone essentially in your TV no after 5 to 10 years not getting updates and generally being lousy especially as either the apps are updated and make it all worse or the apps are not updated and it just continues to be terrible well this is the same problem that exists in a number of other markets whether it's PCS whether it's TVs whether it's tablets all these companies want to get faster product Cycles with faster upgrades but because they're so expensive and because the devices are so capable people aren't upgrading as fast as they upgrade their phone now well no we never changed TV TV Cycles as 10 years has always been about the case right but the the TV makers would like to change that is what I'm saying oh they absolutely would and that's 3D yes you see all these nonsense features and it goes way way back when it you know when we were starting out with HD and then they started doing 120 Herz because that does you can divide 120 by 24 to get 24p uh true cinematic frame rate on a film and then they said well we'll do 240 HZ and it's like what's the difference between 120 and 240 HZ if nothing's running at that resolution uh 240 HZ you know like it was like okay you need it for sports yeah it doesn't really and then you know uh Auto Motion Plus and these other gimmicky soap oper effects and uh then they went 3D and they went Smart TVs and now it's 4K and now it's curv displays and 8K and God knows what else they're doing um there are all kinds of gimmicks being thrown out there in hopes of getting people to buy and none of them have caught on there was a huge change over in televisions when HD came out and they've been trying to rekindle that magic ever since and none of them have worked not even smart TVs well that's because Smart TVs are universally the smart features are kind of terrible right the smart features never see the updates they should to keep TV spies on you and yes your TVs can spy on you and they spy interesting ways right they're not they're not using a camera and actually spying you all although some use the uh the microphone to to listen and kind of things but but what they're doing is they're capturing frames from what you're watching and then recognizing that image to report back what you've been watching and that's terrifying well you have choices you can turn off the Wi-Fi to your smart TV and not use it and use some other third party box on the other on the HDMI cable right you can plug in your Apple TV or your Roku or whatever and uh and if you have Wi-Fi turned off it can't capture here's my question since we're talking about TVs yeah we have a new Apple now post WWDC homepod I think we both agree is a pretty Niche product um iMac Pro how many of those are they going to sell uh They're Not Afraid right now to get into some uh uh areas where they're not what if they sold the TV I mean we're we're sitting here talking about how crappy the market is you never go full Monster you don't have to ever go full Gene I mean I don't think they're going to but uh they are getting back into the monitor business because they tried to hand it off to LG and LG botched it um so they're going to get back in the monitor business they're going to be having panels made for them in you know whatever so they can sell with the Mac Pro that comes out next year H you know up up the size of 60 in I um I'd buy it you would you would too I would not really you want these dumb smart TVs they got right now that are spying on you no I'd rather have dumb TVs that don't have any smarts to them at all well good luck bu them because they don't make many of them anymore you got you can get they're hard to find especially on the high end you want well that's just it is they're not what you want because they aren't the high-end right They're Not Gon to have 4K and they're not gonna yep yeah and so we ask why is Apple getting to the homepod market well this is one reason right here because you want the convenience of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the creepiness and and garbage that comes with it that is a reason for Apple to get into the homepod market on its own you want the capabilities of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the garbage that goes with it and so for Apple they could just enter a market based on that just to say we're going to offer an alternative it's going to be a user a pro user experience you're going to be happy with this you're not going to be creeped out you're not going to think that it's weird uh I think that's a good justification for them to enter a market I'm okay with that not everything that they release has to be a home run not everything needs to to be the next iPhone they just need to make good products that people want that's true let's talk about arkit then sure the demos that we saw were that you could place objects on a table virtually you could have the lighting shift around them correctly they could pop up a an old west Cowboy town and have airplanes going around and buildings destroyed and things and they also showed us Pokémon go rendered with arkit um what are the best applications for this do you think um I think that you know we've talked about this many times before Apple's going to get into AR VR what are they going to do are they going to make them glasses are they going to make a helmet or whatever and and I kept saying no they're going to create a platform for people to do this and this is exactly what's happened um ways that you might see um it integrated into Apps well I mean you've already seen some of it now some of the more popular ones Pokemon go obviously and Snapchat with their filters um that kind of stuff um I don't know how valuable it is but people like it it's gwiz kind of neat kind of cool and it's not like the Snapchat filters are going away people love them so uh it's not a fad like Pokémon go was so I I think that you know to offer a platform to make it easy for developers to do that is in Apple's best interest because then if you want to have those kind of experiences um you need to get an iPhone and you know I I think that for 3D integration with like Maps uh they're talking about like indoor mapping kind of stuff uh imagine you know holding up your phone and being able to uh see where you're going you know some apps have done stuff like that um there there's all kinds of neat little gimmicks that you could do but I I don't know that it's going to be some sort of like gamechanging type thing uh but I think that to be the premier AR platform is good for Apple in the long run I agree that it is but I keep looking for ways that it just goes beyond entertainment you know are is is this simply something that people are going to use to develop more apps and their for charge more money and Apple's going to pay out more in the Apple Store and take their 30% or is this something that people can use to generate real real cash you know is this something that has retail applications is this something that has other business implications is something that's interesting to me and we saw that they did beacons remember beacons yeah right I beacons yeah they still do how they put yeah they still do them but you don't hear about them as as enabling business cases the way you used to right right the there was there was this idea for a while that everyone was going to put beacons in all their shops and as you'd walk through all their shops you'd get little announcements for offers and things like this and and that hasn't come to be hasn't come to fruition so you know I'm wondering does AR and does AR K enable new experiences and new new business cases that we haven't seen before I think that you know there could be some retail uses for it there could be some educational uses for it um obviously games and gimmicky stuff like that I don't think it's going to be essential uh I don't think that it's going to be you know a crucial part of the platform but I think it'll be popular and I think it'll help Drive iPhone sales because imagine if you know Snapchat filters or your Instagram pictures or whatever look that much better on an iPhone because not only does it have great Hardware Great camera great design everything else but there's certain software and and other capabilities within the device that you can't get on an Android phone um and especially stuff that you share like Snapchat uh that makes people want to buy in that makes people want to get more you know I've heard a lot of people say that the portrait mode you know is like a game changer for them on the 7 plus the Simplicity of it all that kind of stuff that's the kind of stuff that Apple's going to do with their platform to encourage the stickiness as they call it people to stick with it but also to draw on new people if you can imagine you know this fall with all these AR apps coming out and you can't get them on Android that's going to be a huge Boon for Apple yeah even more so than it already being the popular phone to have well you see all the YouTube videos that are out there now just with iOS 11 beta and the uh uh Unity or whatever engine from unreal um and you can demo the the AR stuff and people are you know just like putting up pretty basic videos of you know an object floating in the middle of a room or whatever and it works so well that and and this is just proof of concept to show developers how easy it's going to be for them to implement AR as that becomes true and developers start to integrate AR into their apps you're going to see better apps on iOS and that's going to result in more sales for Apple definitely and I feel like there's there's a lot of great places where this kind of AR and Casual gaming could work well together you know you could do things with the airplane trade table you could do you know all sorts of things as as having objects that are around all the time set the stage for the S stuff so it's it's going to be interesting I'm I'm just you know racking my brains to see where else goes and and how far is their Vision on this yeah I don't I it'll be interesting to see I I don't know like you said most of the stuff seems pretty gimmicky seems like games and stuff like that but it's fun let me let me throw this out there just to to annoy everyone who's ever thought about the the Apple car in Project Titan right we haven't heard a whole lot about that in a long while uh the last piece of news we had recently was a bit where uh Tim Cook let on that they were working on um automated driving mhm and what if the AR kit becomes the HUD the heads up display right that's interesting I I think your GPS navigation is broadcast onto the road as you drive yes signs are made signs are digitally enhanced to be more clear to let you know where you can exit Lane guidance whatever all of it yeah well I mean I'm just making that up as I go but it it seems like that's an you know may maybe what if what if AR kit is something they made for themselves for something like that and are now releasing to the rest of us because why not well imagine um in terms of uh film making or just home movies or photography right so a very popular app from years ago and one of the earlier I would hesitate to call it augmented reality but I guess that's what it is JJ Abrams team was behind it it's called action movie it's a popular IOS app and it just allowed you to have you know like a a character from a movie or something like an explosion or whatever and you could put it in whatever you were filming and it like was a you know mix of digital effects with what was going on in the real world you know you could have a missile fly over your shoulder and hit whatever is in front of you so take that to the next level with ar right uh you no longer need a green screen you no longer need a $10,000 camera and a rig and a set and all that kind of stuff you could do it in your home with your phone um you have a camera that can sense depth can figure out what's in the background remove it from the shot you can have an app that brings in 3D characters and has you interact with them and stuff um there's I mean again it's all gimmicky and really not really necessary but you could say that about most technology these days but that kind of stuff is really really cool and people are going to be sharing it put it on YouTube put it on Facebook put it on Instagram wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute because getting rid of green screen so the chroma keying which is what green screen is is there there's a bit of an art to it right you have the screen you have to select the right background you have to get your lighting so that it matches what you're doing with your light source in the background if you don't film it right then you can get green Reflections onto the skin that become hard to get out without taking out the extra skin there all kinds of little intricacies to doing green screen well right um and I have yet to find an app that I really like for doing it if if listeners have some recommendations I would be happy to hear them because I I do own a green screen if you will um and I have I've shot kid my kids in front of it and had them do things and then you know turned that into movies um and it's fun but being able to take away the green screen opens up a whole lot of possibilities right that could be so cool and that's they're not just fun possibilities they also become business pro possibilities because then they can be you know a part of industrial films that you shoot for work they can be part of you know your weather broadcast uh which is the traditional use for green screen imagine shopping at Ikea you are looking at a couch you want to see what it's going to look like in your home and you want to see if it's going to fit um you have an augmented reality capable device that uh especially on an iPhone 7 plus with two camera lenses um can sense depth and measure things and all that sort of stuff and now you can visualize it right in front of you on the screen you can see what it looks like you know I you know Ikea's all over that but Ikea has been into this thing kind of thing for years right the the whole Ikea catalog if you get the Ikea catalog whether it's the app or the printed booklet that they'll they'll mail you everything in there is a complete fiction right everything in the Ikea catalog is a lie because every part of the Ikea catalog is a digital creation not a photograph right the the plants the Furnishings the furniture the accessories pretty everything is digitally created and it's all models that they're placing in a 3D tool in the space in the room that they create and then rendering every part of it so going with AR kit is is one more step in this mission that are already on imagine um wanting to paint your walls and you could imagine you know you could visualize I don't want to imagine painted my walls thank you very much with with AR kit you could do that imagine that you were going on a a tour of a old city um you know you're going through New York and and you're in a place where something famous happened a long time ago and you could hold up your phone and and see it recreated in front of you and it overlays over the buildings and the streets change to you know dirt or been trying that one for a while we used to have the uh there was an AR style Wikipedia app where You' you'd hold up your phone and would overlay the Wikipedia photo on top of the existing reality that's we've been doing that for about 10 years but that it's always been junk and now with arkit it could actually be useful and simple for developers to create and that's where you're going to see the value in it what is it capable of it's capable of everything and nothing at the same time all right just because we we keep coming back to Pro users um we we have two things that were in this keynote that I think were for pro users right I would say the iMac Pro very clearly even though they said we all know this is not the Mac Pro but we think we can do an iMac that's for a pro user here's an iMac Pro uh how do you think the people that were at our Adorama event would receive that uh I mean I think it's expensive but if you compare it to if you were to want to build your your own um there's always this idea of oh I can you know make my own computer and it's so much cheaper the Hackintosh people tried to take the specs that uh were announced this thing and they could not compete with the price and then that doesn't even include the convenient uh all-in-one design uh the display I mean yeah uh people people are going to complain no matter what but uh I think that any pro user should be very happy with the announcement and the uh the external GPU kit the external GPU kit is really exciting to me and something that I want to embrace and I'm thinking about upgrading to a new Macbook Pro with USBC and Thunderbolt 3 just to take advantage of it there is one huge caveat that is bothersome for me the the landscape right now with the egpus is a little crazy as are the landscape for retina caliber displays external displays so if you want to use an egpu it does not work with the built-in screen on your MacBook Pro or your iMac you have to use a separate screen so um that kind of defeats the purpose of these gorgeous displays um and is kind of frustrating to me and if you want to use for example the ultra fine uh 4K or 5K displays um that are out right now you could not use those with these external gpus because there are no external gpus and no graphics cards that support USBC or Thunderbolt 3 and it seems like it would be certainly possible to have it redirect to the internal one uh unless there's some you lose bandd the way that it's hardwired um you lose about 20 to 30% of the capabilities for the people that have hacked it together on Apple's own website they just say simply that egpu support and High Sierra does not support the internal displays it only works external displays and so that's why when they demoed it at WWDC the external display was actually just a HTC uh Vive the um the VR set the VR headset so your second screen was just the VR headset didn't it but if you wanted to do it with a MacBook Pro or even an iMac you'd have to have a separate Monitor and if you want to get a retina caliber monitor with that level of uh pixel density uh the only ones that exist are the LG ultrafine displays and they don't support external gpus so you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place but I I think they were very calculated in that they they knew exactly who this was for you know they they've the complaints they've been getting have been saying we you know we want a Mac Pro that we could put different gpus into because we want to do VR right and that apple had abandoned people creating VR yeah so by saying here's your kit and all the way we're showing it with the uh the HTC 5 it's very clear that this is exactly for VR developer yeah VR um and then as the monitor situation gets better hopefully uh you know will and the support becomes official maybe for Gamers on Mac or even people that have a Mac but dual boot it with windows that want to play games that sort of stuff uh people that edit video for a living that just need more horsepower to crank stuff out uh 3D manipulation creation that sort of stuff there's all kinds of uses to have a a high-end graphics card when docked at home and then to have the portability of a Macbook on the go the one thing that's striking for me is is that there are some parts where Apple's vision is very clear and apparent when it comes to the iPad when it comes to what they're doing with mac and and now a little more so with where it comes to what they're doing for watch and care kit and health kit and it's a lot less clear for things like the car that we haven't really seen any evidence of other than we statements saying that they we know that they're doing it and that they know that they're doing self-driving and uh and and where homepod goes and what home kits meant to be doing you know they they Trot out all the people that support homekit but what's their what's their end game is still a little murky it's just a space that they want to be in and they don't want to see it get out of hand so the same reason that now you're going to be able to hack together your own homekit stuff you know they just don't want to lose ground in there they know that enthusiasts drive a lot of these platforms so there's there's things that are very core essential to their vision and their business and then there are things that are for lack of a better word hobbies and homekit is is you know they've put a placeholder there they've got people using it but it's still hobby for them they got to be in the space yeah I think that you have to have a foot in the door wearables are the same way definitely what story would you like to talk about that we haven't already been addressed oh I mean there was so much from WWDC but I mean I think that we've run the gamut here you know there's new hardware out um new Macbook uh we ran a review um you can check out the the 13-inch Macbook without touch bar uh we will be having in the coming days uh MacBook Pro reviews um uh with touch bar and we also had the 12-in MacBook review and then obviously we we talked about the iPad Pros the 10.5 and 12.9 those will be coming in the coming days as well so keep your eyes peeled for him all right uh I should mention that by the way I own in spirit of full disclosure I own some Apple stock and uh so take it with a grain of salt take it for what you will but this is I do not own shares and apple or any of the companies that I cover and on that bombshell this is episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast and Neil where can people find you on the internet you can find my musings on appleinsider.com uh including a very article that said to only install iOS 11 beta 1 if you hate yourself um and you can yell at me about it and tell me I'm an idiot on Twitter at this is Neil Neil all right I'm Victor marks and thank you for joining usyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Neil Hughes welcome back Neil Victor how's it going pretty well how are you doing doing all right doing all right good and I hope all of our listeners are too so it's been a little while since I last talked to you and in that time I know that that I've installed iOS 11 you've installed iOS 11 and you've got a load of new devices around that you're trying it out on so why don't we Dive Right In and start by talking about some of those devices that you've got in front of you well let me clarify um I'm only running iOS 11 on two devices the new hardware um that we've been reviewing um is we review it as is out of the box so okay so for example a 10.5 in iPad you're running the OS that it comes with the iOS 10 103.3 or whatever it is yeah right because that's the fair way to review it at this time right that's how it comes that's how people are going to experience it out of the box that's the right way to look at it right MH okay so then let me ask um I'm going to separate this out first of all let's talk about the 10.5 in iPad what's what's your experience like with it out of the box um so the 10.5 in iPad is really nice I'm working on the review right now um and it may actually be up by the time people are listening to this so be sure to go to Apple Insider and check out my full review um I have been a proponent of the 12.9 in iPad for a couple years now since it launched in late 2015 um and the 9.7 in was just a little too small um this 10.5 I think is a much better form factor of the 9.7 uh they accomplish this by reducing the bezel somewhat it's not entirely reduced they're still a little bit on the sides and more on the top and bottom but uh the 10.5 in um is just a good size uh in terms of the onscreen keyboard and just the real estate that you have to really take advantage of it going from the 12.9 back to the 9.7 always felt kind of cramped um so I I really like the form factor I still prefer the larger size for what I use my tablet for but I think for a lot of people they're going to be very happy with this especially because the bezel size was reduced so it's not that much bigger than a 9.7 in your hand it doesn't really feel bigger you put them side by side and you can see the difference but it just really feels like the same size and just a little bit more space on the screen uh easier to type the keyboard is just that that little much bigger um I wait I I want to ask how is the keyboard because this was the thing that they said during the worldwide developer conference keynote was that this was the device that was the right size to be able to have a full screen fulls siiz onscreen keyboard yeah it's just big enough to to have a full-size virtual keyboard so in the 9.7 in it's a little undersized which makes it a little tricky typing on the 12.9 obviously you have plenty of real estate and they can even have a virtual number row which I love uh this is not the same doesn't have the full number row and all that um but it does have full size equivalent virtual keys on the screen uh which does make typing easier uh if you're a touch typist like me um It's relatively easy to type on an iPad screen um and this offers kind of the best of of all worlds with the full size but you can also hold it in portrait mode and and do the split keyboard with your thumbs and stuff like that I mean it's really uh pretty awesome in terms of Versatility so what's your word per minute like oh I don't know whatever I I I I haven't checked it but it's I mean it's fast I don't I don't look at the keyboard like I don't use the backlight on my keyboard or anything like that um it's not I I I've been typing for a very long time I write for a living so okay well I mean I uh I've been typing for a very long time but I've never done formal typing practice and so I type it about 50 words per minute mhm um what I like about using using the 12-in iPad I have yet to experience the 10.5 but with the 12-in iPad and Landscape I I can touch type about as well as I type with uh a traditional keyboard mhm yeah where with the 9.7 in I would I would be feeling cramped and I would miss keys and things like that the the thing that I know is that for a lot of people who write for a living who use the iPad Pro as their computer that they prefer the 9.7 because it fits so well in a bag right yeah the the the 12.9 is it's it's big um 9.7 10.5 you know with with the size change on the bezels and stuff this is equivalent people are going to be very happy you're getting a good amount more real estate diagonally Without Really adding to the size of the device you you're not really going to notice the device unless you're hold them side by side it's the same weight um this is a very good compromise that that Apple made with the little bit extra size here um to get you know having that full-size virtual keyboard makes a big difference obviously I can't type as fast on a virtual keyboard as I can on a physical keyboard there are more mistakes but if I'm not sitting down and you know writing more in peace and I'm just you know responding to something doing an email whatever um you know it's just it's that much better when you have the keyboard but really the size difference is is nice but really the main difference with these iPads that makes them kind of a a must must have in my eye uh and the reason that I'm personally considering now upgrading my 12.9 in to the latest model uh despite some frustrations with some of the changes is um the the new what they call the promotion display uh is absolutely amazing it runs 120z 120 HZ display yes yeah and like as soon as you turn this thing on and start going through you know the setup process and it just jumping in between the menus is like it it's just a very big difference it's a noticeable difference right off the bat um you just it's fluid when you switch between uh app home screens when you're scrolling when you're reading all that like you don't even it's one of those things that you don't even realize like almost like before we had re displays we had these low resolution displays it was like oh this is a great screen and you don't realize that it could be better until you get a r display and then you're like oh and then you can't go back I feel almost the same way not quite the same way but almost the same way about the 120 htz display um you you notice it when you go back to a screen that doesn't have it the scrolling and and the zooming and and all that kind of stuff um and not just a visual benefit from this but also uh responsiveness for the apple pencil um is more fluid because of this um higher uh Hertz on the display it just the the frame rate uh is buttery smooth it is stunning it stands out it gets your attention and it looks great so your your verdict is is yeah you're you're thinking strongly about upgrading to the 10.5 in from the 12.9 no I'm I'm going think about upgrading my 12.9 from the 2015 model to the current model now um my reasons for wanting to do that are mostly because of the display uh oh and the new processor is really fast but it's like the last one was that slow but I mean the benchmarks on this thing like rival and MacBook Pro it's crazy it's I mean it's unbelievable how fast they've made these custom processors in here they're they're getting to another level I mean nobody's in the same level when it comes to to competing with with the iPad nobody none of these tablets out there are really in the same playing field it's it's crazy there are a few caveats and um I'm I'm a little frustrated by it um the biggest one for me is especially with the 12.9 in model you're going to drop $800 on this tablet right and it's powerful and it's capable and it's awesome and it has usb3 uh data and charging speeds on the lightning port and it ships with a 12 wat brick the same the same power brick that you know shipped with the first iPad 7 years ago um even though that's that's like the iPad Mini shipping with the 1 amp phone charger brick it I'm not really sure where Apple did this I think I think that the reason that they did it is because they don't want to make a new USB 3 power brick with a full-size USB port and the 29 watt uh brick that or you know I guess plug whatever you want to call it not really a brick but uh the one that comes with the Transformer if you will yes the the 29 watt adapter that ships with the 12-in MacBook doesn't have a fullsize USB port it has USBC so my theory on this is that apple didn't want consumers who buy a new iPad to freak out when it comes with a USBC to lightning cable and they don't want to make a new power brick with fullsize USB because that would be kind of going backwards so they're kind of between a rock and a hard not at all not at all they they just are they also don't want to have to put one more thing in the Box well I I have I regularly use a USBC to usba adapter my my my USB phone is a my USBC phone is a Huawei Nexus 6p which does fast charging over USBC which is a brilliant thing and the power brick for it has just like Apple's a USBC connector on it and sometimes I don't want to charge the the Huawei sometimes I want to charge other things and so I have a USBC to usba adapter belon makes them there are tons of reliable companies that make them and you just plug that into your USBC adapter and then you plug plug in your USB cable usba cable and it works just fine and I think that the USB connector is the reason that we're not getting the 29 watt charger because Apple doesn't want to ship it with a dongle and they realize that a lot of people are still charging their iPads through their computer I mean I'm sure they have market research that shows X number of people are doing this are they I would like to know that or or they have multiple power bricks that they use or whatever there's some reason that they cheaped out with the 12w adapter but you got to realize um the new the new iPads are more powerful than ever right they've got these souped up processors in there that are crazy and they shrink all the components in there so they can fit in larger batteries so the larger 12.9 in iPad Pro went from a 39w hour battery to like a 41w hour battery and this thing takes forever to charge on a 12 wat adap I know it takes forever plug it in and you wait overnight yeah I mean it and you know it gets 10 hours of battery life and the idling is fine all okay great this thing needs to be shipped with a 29 wat adapter and the fact that Apple didn't do it really ticks me off because the the Brick itself is $50 and then the cable if you want to get the USBC to lightning cable is under 25 bucks so I spent $800 on an iPad Pro I want to uh or 650 on the 10.5 in model which is $50 more than it was last year now I got to spend another 75 bucks if I want to charge it at the faster rate uh put it in the Box Apple I mean let's let's just move on and stop cheaping out with this stuff shipping it with a 12wt adapter is absolutely inexcusable and very frustrating to me and I think an oversight by Apple and it's really the the only major ding I have against a product that is otherwise pretty great I mean pretty much Flawless Hardware the only problem I can find with this Hardware is the stupid camera bump like do we really need a you know a 12 megapixel camera with flash on a tablet like who's taking these photos with their tablet just put a flush camera in there make it 8 megapixel no iPad Pro like you're holding up the boom box as John cusac did right that's that's exactly what's going on here is people are videotaping and filming events by holding this thing up above their heads right I like that it has the camera on there but it doesn't need to be that powerful of a camera you can skimp out a little bit there and put the stupid right adapter in the box with the right power Brak that that's my only problem with this Hardware here and it's even more egregious with the 12.9 in model because it at $800 to not be able to include a 29 watt adapter in there for this huge battery it's got to recharge I mean they at least should put it in with the 12.9 in model the fact that it ships with a 12 watt adapter is is insane to me and I think that I'm going to give the 12.9 in uh model a slightly lower score than the um than the 10.5 in model pretty much solely because of that because that that you know when it takes your tablet overnight to charge it's it's inexcusable it's it's it's that's a bad user experience and there's no need for it to ship like that out of the box it's not like these cables and bricks are costing Apple that much that it's going to eat in their margins to ship it in the Box for them I think that that is the main issue with the 12.9 it's not it's not even the tablet itself it's just the accessories that they ship in the box and it's a shame that they do it that way so you think about $800 for the tablet 160 for the keyboard 100 for the pencil and then another 75 for the cable and brick you got a really awesome setup there but you spent over a, bucks on it um it's getting a little pricey at that point but I mean I think it's worth it I think it's a great product I'm I'm very happy with this update um I think that they did a really good job with it but just stop cheaping out on the Brick Apple now wait does does for my own clarification does the 10.5 in work with USBC and and and the the the USB three fast charging yes so this is something that happened that was strange there were a lot of differences between the 12.9 in model and the 10 point or the 9.7 that came out uh last year in late 2015 so the 12.9 in came out first it features USB 3 uh 29 wat fast charging um but it and it had a M9 chip but for some reason did not include always on hey I won't say her name um she who El shall not be named is that well cuz everything's going to turn on if I do it um then the next year 2016 early in the year they shipped the 9.7 in model they did have hey you know who uh always on without being plugged in um even though it had the same processor which made no sense to me it gained the uh true tone display which the 12.9 in did not have but it did not gain the USB 3 lightning Port it only had the usb2 lightning Port which means it didn't have the Quick Charge capabilities which wasn't that big of a deal because it's got a smaller battery um you know you plug that in on the the 12 watt it charges slower but it it's fine it doesn't need it doesn't need as much to to Juice It Up uh but this year both iPad Pros have been released at the same time both have feature parody so they both have the same processor uh they both have the same cameras uh they both have true tone displays now which is new for the 12.9 in they both have the 120 HZ Pro motion display and they both have usb3 lightning connectors for fast charging if you want to pay 75 bucks to get it okay thank you for laying that all out for me yes so your personal preference is to get the 12in and the 10 in is a strong the 10 and 1 half is a strong Contender for people who have the 9.7 in I think most people uh will be very happy with the 9 or with a 10.5 in I think that some size of iPad at this point right oh yeah I I mean I think that the 10.5 is going to be the compromises that they made to get to the larger dis Sizer are not that big of a deal the the the funny thing to me is the the thing that undercuts the iPad Pro more than anything is the $330 9.7 in iPad because a lot of people buying these tablets aren't going to connect to keyboard don't want to spend $100 on the mouse don't want to spend another $75 to fast charge They Don't Really Care pencil they don't care about the 120 HZ display they don't uh care that this display is not laminated the glass they don't care that it's a little bit thicker because you get basically everything that you would need the the A9 chip is plenty fast uh that $330 is packed with value and for $650 on a 10.5in iPad Pro uh the value is not quite as packed and I think that the main thing that undercuts and makes it really the standout device in Apple's lineup is that at 330 bucks uh that thing is a is a bargain it's a Ste I I think that I think that that is the the greatest value currently in Apple's entire product lineup let me ask a question yes because this is something I had not previously thought about so you take that $330 iPad yeah you put iOS 11 on it does it gain the dock and the multitasking capabilities that we saw demonstrated in the keynote all of it say what all of it tell me one more time it gets all of it I installed iOS 11 on an iPad Air 2 that I have here and it works great it's awesome awesome really really the $330 iPad is the best value in Apple's product line that was that was one of the things that that in the past you know some of them got the uh the the slide over where you could have the iPhone app running in a strip alongside but you couldn't pull it all the way and have two evenly spaced out iPad apps running side by side and uh you got an A9 processor with 2 gigs of RAM and it handles it all be yep you can multitask you can split view you can slide over you get the DOT you get all of it huh yeah so then then Conn and if you don't want the SMART connector which it's not like there's any SMART connector accessories available other than keyboards connect a Bluetooth keyboard um get a Bluetooth stylus if you really want something to draw with I mean there are compromises made obviously to get to that $330 price point but that is so cheap compared to you think about when the iPad first launch it was 500 bucks now the the pro is 650 we're down to 330 with a with a 9.7 in screen the the the iPad Pro is a great buy for the people that want to take advantage of the features on it somebody like me who really likes you know the larger screen and and likes the the 120 HZ display and the SMART connector all that kind of stuff great but for most people they don't even need the 10.5 in just get the 9.7 inch wow the entry level iPad is the way to go for a lot of people and I think that that's gonna be I think it's gon to Bear out in the sales too that is something that is really quite something okay but it's a great lineup that they have right now if you think about it you know a lot of differentiation at the different price points to justify um where they're at I think that the the and with iOS 11 coming uh the iPad is in a very strong position right now much better than it's been in years well so we should talk about that we iOS 11 changes things for iPad more drastically than it does for some of the other devices right it's the biggest change ever for iPad yeah you you get a doc and we haven't had a doc on iOS before the doc is divided into two sections it's the applications that are are Main Stays across one side of it and the other is predictive things where uh Apple sort of decides what they think is going to come next it includes things like handoff and and other stuff in there right MH and long pressing on these things can uh can can show Windows of what's available there it can also help you with your your files as you're uh or Dragon drop and dragon drop uh starting the slide over stuff you can actually do four tasks at once uh on the screen at the same time with iOS 11 even on a 9.7 in so let's let's count first of all you get split view which is two apps right mhm and then you can float another view on top using the slide over style right and if you have the 12.9 in iPad Pro I don't know if you can do this on the 10. 5 because I didn't update iOS 11 but uh if you have the 12.9 you can still interact with the apps that are in the background in addition to the slide over one and then if you throw in picture and picture uh that's four apps at once your your counting video is running as a as a separate app there correct because well it is so okay that's that's impressive and then obviously you know things like location music and whatever could run in the background too so you could run more than four apps at once but you can have four apps on screen at once and it doesn't feel cluttered or weird or excessive wow now let me ask this can you I I have the feeling that with these big changes that there's going to be need to the need for some tutorials on on how these things work how does drag and drop work how does markup work yeah when you take a screenshot right do you think that Apple's going to supply some of these these um things to help people learn about them I mean I think so you can see that they're doing you know classes throughout the day at their retail stores now um obviously there's the tips app that's installed on iOS devices um you know and when who knows what it'll be like when it actually ships but you know uh I'm sure that they'll have stuff on their website and obviously we'll have stuff on Apple Insider but the important thing to remember when it comes to any of these features that are being added is these platforms get more mature is the power user features never take away the Simplicity of the platform platform um you can navigate an iPhone quite well without ever knowing that control center exists and the only thing that you would miss out on is other than the convenience of having it there is the built-in flashlight because there's no other way to access in the operating system but you could download an app to do that too so um it's important that as you add power user features you don't take away the Simplicity of how to do these things you still have a dedicated Settings app that you can dig into if you want to turn off Bluetooth and go into airplan mode and whatever um and that's how you move a platform forward without alienating the users that appreciate the Simplicity and have gotten used to it I will say that one of the things that I was slightly disappointed by was that I I enjoyed using the uh the the flicking action in the multitasking view yeah to quit apps to dismiss applications and in iOS 11 on iPad that's no longer the behavior you have to long press tap on X in a corner to dismiss an application I agree with you but it's important that people remember that this is beta and things can and will change before launch so if you're testing the beta um and you're a registered developer um Apple encourages people to send feedback and so if you don't like that change I would say send send a message to Apple but I agree with you um being able to quickly close apps is something that is currently missing uh in beta 1 one thing that is great though with the multitasking view um um is you can have apps that are done in split view are in a permanent state so for example if I have uh one task open that is split between Safari and slack uh I then multitask to another uh combination of music and calendar uh both in split view they they remain persistent in that state so when you go back to the other app it remembers that you have those two paired together it's pretty cool yeah now these this is something that on on Apple they've always called this a spaces in Mac OS 10 and Mac OS it's called spaces it's really an implementation of a concept that's been around for decades called virtual desktops and you know on on traditional computers you'd arrange your applications the way you'd like on a virtual desktop and then switch to a new desktop or a new space as Apple calls it and arrange new applications and this is the first time that it's come to iPad what's cool about this as you say is that they remember which applications are in a space or in a virtual desktop just as they do on the the traditional computer uh you know this was something we were doing in Unix God 20 years ago 30 well 25 years ago and we're doing in BOS 20 years ago um the I I you know I keep slack and messages in the same space because they're both messaging applications and I do that on on iOS 11 just as well as I do it in uh Mac OS and there are still some things about what happens to an application when it's been placed alongside another one in split view or in slide over mode in a space on iOS 11 that's that's I think a symptom of it being still beta 1 um for example when I start using messaging apps in messages but messages is that small strip of a a slide overview yeah I I lose the keyboard and I lose the uh the the messages app area takes up the whole bottom width of the landscape view uh overriding slack it's it's uh there's something that they have to still work out about um this the space that things should take when they're in a different type of view yeah that's one thing that especially with a 12.9 in that I would like to see improved in multitasking and I don't think we'll get it this year obviously since iOS 11 is anounced but maybe a iOS 12 type thing is uh especially if you're holding the device in um like a portrait mode um and you slide or do a split view with an app um given how tall the screen is you get this very awkward long skinny you know whatever it is for that app and for some for some apps that might look fine but for a lot of them it's a lot of real estate that's really not necessary what would be nice to see is something that operates like a combination of slide over with um the way that picture and picture works so imagine that if you were able to slide over um an app uh like let's say messages would be a great one um you could slide it over but it would float in the corners and you could resize it as bigger or smaller but it wouldn't have to take up the entire uh height of the screen um it would be in more of a iPhone size so you know like uh 169 box that sits in the bottom right corner you can drag it over the bottom left corner and it stays in a persistent State on top of the screen as you jump between apps so imagine that you were in a conversation with somebody and messages or slack or whatever you have it on the bottom left of your screen you hit the home button it's still kind of sitting over there you can float it and move it as needed when you're reading and moving around you can pull up two apps at once and it still stays you know floating over there just like the picture and picture mode works I think that would be a really great multitasking addition yeah but so to to tie it together right to bring this to to ahead Apple said for years that we were in the post-pc world that was the Steve Jobs line we were in the post PC era uh Tim Cook has repeatedly said that the iPad is their vision of computing in the future it's their clearest vision of what Computing should be and I would say that this this what they've shown us so far with iOS 11 delivers on that promise would you agree yes we still have a long way to go but the improved multitasking the uh addition of a file app un Universal you know to save your files and access them between apps and stuff like that um make a huge difference the doc uh switching between apps all that kind of stuff uh it's a huge difference but I think that the last missing piece is some form of a cursor input for text manipulation um yeah and and there's been you know there there have been people who've said that holding the your finger down on the keyboard and that turns it into cursor input selection is is the answer to that uh I would I would agree with you that there's still some room for refinement there but I would be more than okay with mouse and trackpad input that comes with the caveat that no apps on the app store or native can require it because touch has to be the primary mode of input for this you can attach a keyboard if you want but you don't need a keyboard you could connect a pointer accessory of some type if you want but you don't need it same with pencil same with everything else as long as the core functionality of the product continues to work who does it hurt if we add it in h it does sound it does feel like retrograde in some ways though well I I saw an interesting concept A few weeks ago before iOS 11 was announced where people were talking about what would happen if they had a trackpad on the new U magic or um yeah yeah that was a grber thing he was talking about yeah and and the idea was um do it like it is on tvos so rather than having a physical pointer on the screen um if you're on the home screen using a trackpad uh the app icons would you know it would go between them as you dragged your finger around it would select different ones as you moved around yeah right and and that would make some sense I mean I could see that working but it doesn't change the fact that you would still need some form of just specific cursor input for text entry interesting uh you could do that just as the same way that you use the keyboard on screen with with the TV remote selecting letters mhm yeah and and let's not forget that you know Apple has caved on things like they originally said your games cannot require a controller and then they said okay if you want to make a game that requires a controller go for it um and you know remember when you couldn't use the volume button to take pictures or you could say that they caved on having a stylus right you could say so when when we talk about them caving it's that's that's when I go back to what is their vision for the future what is what's their real goal here right and their real goal was for people to replace place the computer with the iPad and for some professionals especially digital artists uh when you're saying that the iPad is a wonderful tablet for drawing you can't tell them that and then not give them a pen right you know the the the we will n if you see a stylist they've failed was saying that if you see a stylist for inputting text and for tapping on icons it's a failure not if you see a stylist for doing digital artwork it's a failure right so they knew that they needed to have one in order to get to the vision of this thing being the tool for Professionals for digital artists as professionals let's say um do they need to have a trackpad for that to Work N it depends let's see what we're talking about in terms of tasks and jobs to be done right when when we talk about the other things that they've backpedal on uh you know when when they said this is the very best camera that's in your pocket but you don't have a shutter button you have an on screen visual one so now you have to look at the screen as opposed to your subject or or you know you can't take your photo nearly as fast because you have to find and tap on the right area of the screen uh using the volume key was the right answer mhm it's it's it's not about drawing a firm Line in the Sand and saying we'll never do that it's about figuring out is this something that has to be done in order to get to the goal right what is Apple's goal here what are we actually trying to accomplish who are doing it for and what do we need need to do and if that involves backpedaling so be it I I've been saying for years now here on the podcast you know Apple needs to take the training wheels off of the iPad that the hardware is there the software needs to catch up this is a huge leap forward for the software huge if if the $330 iPad does all that you say then then haven't they just done that aren't the training wheels falling off now they are yeah I I there's still a ways to go but it's a huge step in the right direction absolutely I am impressed I want to change gears completely and I I'm going to go ahead and bring this up because we were just talking about Apple's vision and what they're trying to accomplish let's talk about homepod so I I I I bring this up because I've I've been looking at for a long time the different types of voice speakers that are Voice Assistant speaker products that are out there Alexa products Amazon Echo products the Google Home Products um the different voice assistants you know Viv that turned into Bixby or Viv that got bought by Samsung who released Bixby I'm still not entirely certain that Viv is the basis for Bixby um things like this and I like the idea of a voice assistant so they introduced this speaker and they're calling at homepod and they emphasize its music features first and oh by the way it has series second and that was interesting uh the other thing that's interesting is they they the 349 price tag right Which is far higher than Alexa or Google home so what is the vision what is what is Apple's goal by introducing this thing you know maybe it's a a backdoor way into putting Siri in your home in a you know more permanent way the that they're pitching it as more of a music device than a Siri device and I think that makes sense for a number of reasons namely the price for $350 they can't say this is an echo competitor they have to talk about how they differentiate it and I think that having a premium speaker has a market I don't know how big that market is but um for somebody like myself who is a big fan of AirPlay and has speakers throughout my home to listen to music I think it's a great product um and uh I I really like that you know the iPod Hi-Fi was an earlier stab at this and largely a failure um I own one and it was a great product but the market for it wasn't that big people really didn't see a need and this product may do the same thing I don't know how it's going to pan out for them but I'm excited for it because I want uh some form of an echo competitor that is not you know listening for what I want to buy on Amazon and I want a great speaker so yeah well so there there are a couple of things to unpack here I I think the first thing is that there are a limited number of of companies that can sell an audio product for 350 bucks Y and if I had to name them I'd say their names are Bose Bowers and Wilkins beats um Sonos Sonos and and I start to run out of answers after that don't I yeah I mean there's some other Niche like I have my master Dynamic headphones that I love Master Dynamic lione libratone is pretty good in there right they they can do it senis uh uh n no they make Studio headphones they make okay cans but they don't make speakers not really um um oh who was that weird one that Mikey reviewed that I saw in the New York airport oh um they have a store in SoHo here too actually near the Apple Store it's called uh they sell it at the Apple Store too I think it's crazy yeah uh I can't think the name of it right now but yeah it's um devet Phantom that's the devet that thing is it's awesome uh it's absurd it's beautiful and it's great but yeah yeah I mean that's that's super Niche that's beyond Niche that's 10 people in the world own one exactly um right so I I have not used all the fingers on two hands yet is is how far we've come and we've run out of people who can do that so the question is is first of all can apple do it after having failed the last time around Grant I grant you that was 10 years ago right that was that was uh 10 or 11 years ago it was 2008 basically so and and second of all so who who are the people that are supposed to buy this they're not Sonos users they're Apple music users right there are 27 million Apple music subscribers so what percentage of that do they think they're going to sell this thing to you know how how do you measure success on something like this right I mean we look at the iPhone and obviously that's a colossal success um but then you start to go further down Apple's product lineup and it's like uh you know the iPad sales are down but they're still moving 10 million in a quarter that's pretty impressive um you know Apple watch they're not announcing numbers but even if they're selling two or three million in a in a quarter that's a pretty good number um they just refresh the MacBook Air the the outgoing non retina the 13in because they want to maintain that you know sub $1,000 price how many of those are they selling I mean they're selling four 5 million Max in a quarter are they selling $500 ,000 MacBook airs are they selling 200,000 MacBook airs I don't know um how many of these do they need to sell with the homep Pod do they need to sell half a million do they need to sell 5 million do they need to sell you know I I don't know how you consider it to be a success because I don't know that it really matters that much um I think that as long as the product does what it aims to do um and can you know the bean counters at Apple I think that we don't need to worry about the success of it that much I think it's going to be fine I think there's a built-in audience of you know probably a million people they're going to buy this thing no matter what and apple continue to make it and it'll kind of be one of their Niche products you know it'll be something off in the corner at the Apple Store I I don't see this being this isn't this product isn't that big of a deal for most so so when you say they can sell a million units that's fine what I'm thinking is that's probably just a an extrapolation of scale because when I was making products years ago I used to say look we can sell 50,000 units of anything to nerds right you you you can make some off-the-wall wacky thing that barely even functions and sell 50,000 of them it's it's getting past that and selling to to people who are on the other side of the early adoption curve that is the difficult thing so that's your hund that's that's your million units is that Apple can sell a million of these things to anyone just because they're apple and they're that big the question I have is is so what's their vision for this thing is their Vision to sell it to their apple music subscribers to listen to Apple music through is their Vision that this thing is the missing piece of the puzzle in homekit um is is this the thing that fixes AirPlay for multiroom what what what's what's the purpose of this thing and why are they making it other than you know someone convinced Tim Cook that they wanted to make music stuff again I think all the above I think that uh it's a space that they wanted to get into because they don't want to get pushed out by Amazon um they need to offer something that competes there's clearly a market for it I don't think that they necessarily know what it's going to become they're they're marketing it as a speaker because that justifies the price but we may see two years down the road a you know home pod Nano that cost $99 and doesn't have the same sound quality but does you know or whatever um we may see you know a high-end um homepod Pro for all we know I mean who knows where this product goes but I think if you look at the success that they've had with the Apple watch that might give you an idea of their ability to kind of uh pivot and focus on what's working and diminish what is not workking um I think that that's but that's precisely what concerns me is because the Apple launch launched the the Apple watch rather launched without a a super Clear Vision or statement for what the thing should do and why you should buy it right it it was it does all these things and if you hear one of those things that resonates with you then you should buy it as opposed to Apple being able to tell you clearly like they did with the iPad this is the best way to sit back and have a relaxed Computing experience was the first thing that that jobs pitched at in 2010 you know you if if homepod is another one of these things like the watch where we make this thing it does all this stuff and by the way if one of those resonates with you you might want to buy it then we've got another two years of Apple figuring out what homepod is for I mean I think my biggest problem with homepod in terms of being a big you know multi-million selling success is if I give you $350 let's imagine if the the hod is out today it's in the store I give you $350 you walk into an Apple store and I say buy one thing with this $350 what are you going to buy are you going to buy the homepod are you going to buy a 9.7 inch iPad yeah I'm saying are you going to buy a $350 Apple watch are you g to buy because I mean there are a lot of products that for that price in Apple's product lineup are way more appealing I think that an Apple Watch is more appealing to more people I think that iPad is more way more appealing to more people um so I think that you know the homep Pod is not going to be a move the needle for Apple it's just it's not that kind of product it's a speaker and I think that as long as they have that goal for it in mind um and I think that you know unlike years ago when the Hi-Fi came out um I think this is more of a storm that they could weather with enough cash in the bank that it doesn't matter and much like the Apple TV was a hobby before they launched an app store for it uh this can be a presence for them and a way for them to get their foot in the door in a market that they see becoming a bigger deal in the future but while that shakes out and while consumers continue to get comfortable with the idea of a speaker in their home you I was just watching uh um Cole bear the other night and uh um uh an actress was on there and she was talking about how uh she you know threw her Amazon Echo in the closet because she didn't like that it was constantly listening to her and her kids around the house and stuff that's a very common comment that I hear from a lot of people people are not entirely comfortable with these products and that might be one of the reasons why Apple priced it the way that they did designed it the way that they did and are marketing it the way that they are because I think that there's still a reluctance from consumers to have that sort of a product and I think that maybe they're letting the market shake out and giving it time until people get more comfortable with Siri constantly listening to you to really uh you know take the training wheels off well and they said that Siri listening to you doesn't send anything to them until you intentionally direct it to that is exactly why they made it a point to emphasize that yeah um the same reason that the Apple TV requires you to press a button on the remote for it to to talk to Siri on that Apple makes all these decisions for very conscious reason and I'm sure they have all kinds of internal market research that shows that there is a reason to do this is that good for Apple's long-term success though right one of the things we've talked about in the past is that you you to for machine learning and for uh artificial intelligence you need to have large data sets right are are they intentionally crippling themselves by take by by planting their flag on this hill I don't know um you know there were reports of people that work in AI that you know were leaving apple or were moving on to other places because they couldn't even publish their research which is a big part of you know working in machine learning and stuff like that they've since relaxed on some of that I think that Apple takes a very conservative slow approach to these things like we talked about before with the iPad and bringing in a St or the pencil and stylus all that kind of stuff and I think there's something to be said for that because um it allows us to kind of pause and think about these things and and do them in a way that's not so halfhazard and and is smart and is measured uh and done right and I think that Apple's approach is going to be okay because not only do they have the brand cach a and and people that are are buying in but it's still a a niche market it's not like it's out of hand that you know it's gone it's not like Windows phone coming to Market and trying to catch up with iOS you know like it's not like everybody's got an echo uh this is a thing that Amazon is pushing but it's still a novelty and if it becomes a thing and it becomes you know like they're selling tens of millions of them or whatever uh Apple's going to be in on the ground floor at this point well and Apple's never been afraid of being with the right product and this thing the the homepod has an A8 chip in it which is not too shabby uh presumably it's going to have capability of software updates and considering that Siri depends a lot on the cloud uh this is the kind of product that could be updated and remain relevant for years to come as the market evolves and changes and as people expect more and want more and demand more uh you could expect to see the homepod become whatever it needs to be uh in much the same way that watchos was reimagined after it was you know refocused with what people were using the product for my one thought is is that you know Google and Amazon are taking very different approaches to adoption here uh Amazon and and Google are both encouraging third party manufacturers to build their AI into third party speakers and third party products right you you know into the EOB thermostat which has Alexa built into it or the uh the hmdx Jam speaker that has Alexa built into it or the the ones that I sent you a picture of last week that have the ability to pair multiple units MH right there there's an Amazon Alexa enabled speaker that you can pair multiple units with and have multi-room audio going on um you know we're not that far away from someone like a Sonos a reputable speaker manufacturer building in the voice assistant into their good speakers right but I mean it's not it's not like the barrier for entry for Amazon Echo is high you can get a DOT for what like $60 or something you can get a DOT for 39 bucks if you have Prime and get the coupon so there you go I mean so yes is it an approach that these companies are taking by letting anybody install anything sure does it really matter I don't think so well the idea is that you don't have to necessarily end up buying a dedicated speaker unit you can buy just whatever accessories you're going to be buying anyway and oh look they all have that one assistant built in yeah I I get I I don't see that moving you uh you bought a light bulb and by the way it's got electri yeah great just what I wanted right this is like my my 4K Sony TV with Android TV on it it's like just I want to unall it I want it gone well yeah and you can't it's terrible are it's like it lags just from you navigating you are on the so you you discovered that it lags right you discovered that it's unsuitable and you don't like it but a lot of people shop with these things in mind or or shop and see that as a bonus right it's easy it's got a button on the remote it says Netflix I mean that's why they do it well and TCL that makes the uh the Amazon Fire TV they for years they made Roku TVs and had Roku built in and at CES they showed and they now selling a TV that that has the essentially an Amazon Firebox built into the TV I mean the things will get there eventually but the fact that you know you spend this kind of money on a TV and then the menu lags it's like this is crazy here's here's what the problem is right the problem is that the the cell phone is an every two-year device yeah sometimes more frequent sometimes less frequent but more or less it's an every two-year device yeah right would you agree yes okay what is your buying cycle for television five plus years closer to 10 for most people right and so do you want an Android phone essentially in your TV no after 5 to 10 years not getting updates and generally being lousy especially as either the apps are updated and make it all worse or the apps are not updated and it just continues to be terrible well this is the same problem that exists in a number of other markets whether it's PCS whether it's TVs whether it's tablets all these companies want to get faster product Cycles with faster upgrades but because they're so expensive and because the devices are so capable people aren't upgrading as fast as they upgrade their phone now well no we never changed TV TV Cycles as 10 years has always been about the case right but the the TV makers would like to change that is what I'm saying oh they absolutely would and that's 3D yes you see all these nonsense features and it goes way way back when it you know when we were starting out with HD and then they started doing 120 Herz because that does you can divide 120 by 24 to get 24p uh true cinematic frame rate on a film and then they said well we'll do 240 HZ and it's like what's the difference between 120 and 240 HZ if nothing's running at that resolution uh 240 HZ you know like it was like okay you need it for sports yeah it doesn't really and then you know uh Auto Motion Plus and these other gimmicky soap oper effects and uh then they went 3D and they went Smart TVs and now it's 4K and now it's curv displays and 8K and God knows what else they're doing um there are all kinds of gimmicks being thrown out there in hopes of getting people to buy and none of them have caught on there was a huge change over in televisions when HD came out and they've been trying to rekindle that magic ever since and none of them have worked not even smart TVs well that's because Smart TVs are universally the smart features are kind of terrible right the smart features never see the updates they should to keep TV spies on you and yes your TVs can spy on you and they spy interesting ways right they're not they're not using a camera and actually spying you all although some use the uh the microphone to to listen and kind of things but but what they're doing is they're capturing frames from what you're watching and then recognizing that image to report back what you've been watching and that's terrifying well you have choices you can turn off the Wi-Fi to your smart TV and not use it and use some other third party box on the other on the HDMI cable right you can plug in your Apple TV or your Roku or whatever and uh and if you have Wi-Fi turned off it can't capture here's my question since we're talking about TVs yeah we have a new Apple now post WWDC homepod I think we both agree is a pretty Niche product um iMac Pro how many of those are they going to sell uh They're Not Afraid right now to get into some uh uh areas where they're not what if they sold the TV I mean we're we're sitting here talking about how crappy the market is you never go full Monster you don't have to ever go full Gene I mean I don't think they're going to but uh they are getting back into the monitor business because they tried to hand it off to LG and LG botched it um so they're going to get back in the monitor business they're going to be having panels made for them in you know whatever so they can sell with the Mac Pro that comes out next year H you know up up the size of 60 in I um I'd buy it you would you would too I would not really you want these dumb smart TVs they got right now that are spying on you no I'd rather have dumb TVs that don't have any smarts to them at all well good luck bu them because they don't make many of them anymore you got you can get they're hard to find especially on the high end you want well that's just it is they're not what you want because they aren't the high-end right They're Not Gon to have 4K and they're not gonna yep yeah and so we ask why is Apple getting to the homepod market well this is one reason right here because you want the convenience of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the creepiness and and garbage that comes with it that is a reason for Apple to get into the homepod market on its own you want the capabilities of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the garbage that goes with it and so for Apple they could just enter a market based on that just to say we're going to offer an alternative it's going to be a user a pro user experience you're going to be happy with this you're not going to be creeped out you're not going to think that it's weird uh I think that's a good justification for them to enter a market I'm okay with that not everything that they release has to be a home run not everything needs to to be the next iPhone they just need to make good products that people want that's true let's talk about arkit then sure the demos that we saw were that you could place objects on a table virtually you could have the lighting shift around them correctly they could pop up a an old west Cowboy town and have airplanes going around and buildings destroyed and things and they also showed us Pokémon go rendered with arkit um what are the best applications for this do you think um I think that you know we've talked about this many times before Apple's going to get into AR VR what are they going to do are they going to make them glasses are they going to make a helmet or whatever and and I kept saying no they're going to create a platform for people to do this and this is exactly what's happened um ways that you might see um it integrated into Apps well I mean you've already seen some of it now some of the more popular ones Pokemon go obviously and Snapchat with their filters um that kind of stuff um I don't know how valuable it is but people like it it's gwiz kind of neat kind of cool and it's not like the Snapchat filters are going away people love them so uh it's not a fad like Pokémon go was so I I think that you know to offer a platform to make it easy for developers to do that is in Apple's best interest because then if you want to have those kind of experiences um you need to get an iPhone and you know I I think that for 3D integration with like Maps uh they're talking about like indoor mapping kind of stuff uh imagine you know holding up your phone and being able to uh see where you're going you know some apps have done stuff like that um there there's all kinds of neat little gimmicks that you could do but I I don't know that it's going to be some sort of like gamechanging type thing uh but I think that to be the premier AR platform is good for Apple in the long run I agree that it is but I keep looking for ways that it just goes beyond entertainment you know are is is this simply something that people are going to use to develop more apps and their for charge more money and Apple's going to pay out more in the Apple Store and take their 30% or is this something that people can use to generate real real cash you know is this something that has retail applications is this something that has other business implications is something that's interesting to me and we saw that they did beacons remember beacons yeah right I beacons yeah they still do how they put yeah they still do them but you don't hear about them as as enabling business cases the way you used to right right the there was there was this idea for a while that everyone was going to put beacons in all their shops and as you'd walk through all their shops you'd get little announcements for offers and things like this and and that hasn't come to be hasn't come to fruition so you know I'm wondering does AR and does AR K enable new experiences and new new business cases that we haven't seen before I think that you know there could be some retail uses for it there could be some educational uses for it um obviously games and gimmicky stuff like that I don't think it's going to be essential uh I don't think that it's going to be you know a crucial part of the platform but I think it'll be popular and I think it'll help Drive iPhone sales because imagine if you know Snapchat filters or your Instagram pictures or whatever look that much better on an iPhone because not only does it have great Hardware Great camera great design everything else but there's certain software and and other capabilities within the device that you can't get on an Android phone um and especially stuff that you share like Snapchat uh that makes people want to buy in that makes people want to get more you know I've heard a lot of people say that the portrait mode you know is like a game changer for them on the 7 plus the Simplicity of it all that kind of stuff that's the kind of stuff that Apple's going to do with their platform to encourage the stickiness as they call it people to stick with it but also to draw on new people if you can imagine you know this fall with all these AR apps coming out and you can't get them on Android that's going to be a huge Boon for Apple yeah even more so than it already being the popular phone to have well you see all the YouTube videos that are out there now just with iOS 11 beta and the uh uh Unity or whatever engine from unreal um and you can demo the the AR stuff and people are you know just like putting up pretty basic videos of you know an object floating in the middle of a room or whatever and it works so well that and and this is just proof of concept to show developers how easy it's going to be for them to implement AR as that becomes true and developers start to integrate AR into their apps you're going to see better apps on iOS and that's going to result in more sales for Apple definitely and I feel like there's there's a lot of great places where this kind of AR and Casual gaming could work well together you know you could do things with the airplane trade table you could do you know all sorts of things as as having objects that are around all the time set the stage for the S stuff so it's it's going to be interesting I'm I'm just you know racking my brains to see where else goes and and how far is their Vision on this yeah I don't I it'll be interesting to see I I don't know like you said most of the stuff seems pretty gimmicky seems like games and stuff like that but it's fun let me let me throw this out there just to to annoy everyone who's ever thought about the the Apple car in Project Titan right we haven't heard a whole lot about that in a long while uh the last piece of news we had recently was a bit where uh Tim Cook let on that they were working on um automated driving mhm and what if the AR kit becomes the HUD the heads up display right that's interesting I I think your GPS navigation is broadcast onto the road as you drive yes signs are made signs are digitally enhanced to be more clear to let you know where you can exit Lane guidance whatever all of it yeah well I mean I'm just making that up as I go but it it seems like that's an you know may maybe what if what if AR kit is something they made for themselves for something like that and are now releasing to the rest of us because why not well imagine um in terms of uh film making or just home movies or photography right so a very popular app from years ago and one of the earlier I would hesitate to call it augmented reality but I guess that's what it is JJ Abrams team was behind it it's called action movie it's a popular IOS app and it just allowed you to have you know like a a character from a movie or something like an explosion or whatever and you could put it in whatever you were filming and it like was a you know mix of digital effects with what was going on in the real world you know you could have a missile fly over your shoulder and hit whatever is in front of you so take that to the next level with ar right uh you no longer need a green screen you no longer need a $10,000 camera and a rig and a set and all that kind of stuff you could do it in your home with your phone um you have a camera that can sense depth can figure out what's in the background remove it from the shot you can have an app that brings in 3D characters and has you interact with them and stuff um there's I mean again it's all gimmicky and really not really necessary but you could say that about most technology these days but that kind of stuff is really really cool and people are going to be sharing it put it on YouTube put it on Facebook put it on Instagram wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute because getting rid of green screen so the chroma keying which is what green screen is is there there's a bit of an art to it right you have the screen you have to select the right background you have to get your lighting so that it matches what you're doing with your light source in the background if you don't film it right then you can get green Reflections onto the skin that become hard to get out without taking out the extra skin there all kinds of little intricacies to doing green screen well right um and I have yet to find an app that I really like for doing it if if listeners have some recommendations I would be happy to hear them because I I do own a green screen if you will um and I have I've shot kid my kids in front of it and had them do things and then you know turned that into movies um and it's fun but being able to take away the green screen opens up a whole lot of possibilities right that could be so cool and that's they're not just fun possibilities they also become business pro possibilities because then they can be you know a part of industrial films that you shoot for work they can be part of you know your weather broadcast uh which is the traditional use for green screen imagine shopping at Ikea you are looking at a couch you want to see what it's going to look like in your home and you want to see if it's going to fit um you have an augmented reality capable device that uh especially on an iPhone 7 plus with two camera lenses um can sense depth and measure things and all that sort of stuff and now you can visualize it right in front of you on the screen you can see what it looks like you know I you know Ikea's all over that but Ikea has been into this thing kind of thing for years right the the whole Ikea catalog if you get the Ikea catalog whether it's the app or the printed booklet that they'll they'll mail you everything in there is a complete fiction right everything in the Ikea catalog is a lie because every part of the Ikea catalog is a digital creation not a photograph right the the plants the Furnishings the furniture the accessories pretty everything is digitally created and it's all models that they're placing in a 3D tool in the space in the room that they create and then rendering every part of it so going with AR kit is is one more step in this mission that are already on imagine um wanting to paint your walls and you could imagine you know you could visualize I don't want to imagine painted my walls thank you very much with with AR kit you could do that imagine that you were going on a a tour of a old city um you know you're going through New York and and you're in a place where something famous happened a long time ago and you could hold up your phone and and see it recreated in front of you and it overlays over the buildings and the streets change to you know dirt or been trying that one for a while we used to have the uh there was an AR style Wikipedia app where You' you'd hold up your phone and would overlay the Wikipedia photo on top of the existing reality that's we've been doing that for about 10 years but that it's always been junk and now with arkit it could actually be useful and simple for developers to create and that's where you're going to see the value in it what is it capable of it's capable of everything and nothing at the same time all right just because we we keep coming back to Pro users um we we have two things that were in this keynote that I think were for pro users right I would say the iMac Pro very clearly even though they said we all know this is not the Mac Pro but we think we can do an iMac that's for a pro user here's an iMac Pro uh how do you think the people that were at our Adorama event would receive that uh I mean I think it's expensive but if you compare it to if you were to want to build your your own um there's always this idea of oh I can you know make my own computer and it's so much cheaper the Hackintosh people tried to take the specs that uh were announced this thing and they could not compete with the price and then that doesn't even include the convenient uh all-in-one design uh the display I mean yeah uh people people are going to complain no matter what but uh I think that any pro user should be very happy with the announcement and the uh the external GPU kit the external GPU kit is really exciting to me and something that I want to embrace and I'm thinking about upgrading to a new Macbook Pro with USBC and Thunderbolt 3 just to take advantage of it there is one huge caveat that is bothersome for me the the landscape right now with the egpus is a little crazy as are the landscape for retina caliber displays external displays so if you want to use an egpu it does not work with the built-in screen on your MacBook Pro or your iMac you have to use a separate screen so um that kind of defeats the purpose of these gorgeous displays um and is kind of frustrating to me and if you want to use for example the ultra fine uh 4K or 5K displays um that are out right now you could not use those with these external gpus because there are no external gpus and no graphics cards that support USBC or Thunderbolt 3 and it seems like it would be certainly possible to have it redirect to the internal one uh unless there's some you lose bandd the way that it's hardwired um you lose about 20 to 30% of the capabilities for the people that have hacked it together on Apple's own website they just say simply that egpu support and High Sierra does not support the internal displays it only works external displays and so that's why when they demoed it at WWDC the external display was actually just a HTC uh Vive the um the VR set the VR headset so your second screen was just the VR headset didn't it but if you wanted to do it with a MacBook Pro or even an iMac you'd have to have a separate Monitor and if you want to get a retina caliber monitor with that level of uh pixel density uh the only ones that exist are the LG ultrafine displays and they don't support external gpus so you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place but I I think they were very calculated in that they they knew exactly who this was for you know they they've the complaints they've been getting have been saying we you know we want a Mac Pro that we could put different gpus into because we want to do VR right and that apple had abandoned people creating VR yeah so by saying here's your kit and all the way we're showing it with the uh the HTC 5 it's very clear that this is exactly for VR developer yeah VR um and then as the monitor situation gets better hopefully uh you know will and the support becomes official maybe for Gamers on Mac or even people that have a Mac but dual boot it with windows that want to play games that sort of stuff uh people that edit video for a living that just need more horsepower to crank stuff out uh 3D manipulation creation that sort of stuff there's all kinds of uses to have a a high-end graphics card when docked at home and then to have the portability of a Macbook on the go the one thing that's striking for me is is that there are some parts where Apple's vision is very clear and apparent when it comes to the iPad when it comes to what they're doing with mac and and now a little more so with where it comes to what they're doing for watch and care kit and health kit and it's a lot less clear for things like the car that we haven't really seen any evidence of other than we statements saying that they we know that they're doing it and that they know that they're doing self-driving and uh and and where homepod goes and what home kits meant to be doing you know they they Trot out all the people that support homekit but what's their what's their end game is still a little murky it's just a space that they want to be in and they don't want to see it get out of hand so the same reason that now you're going to be able to hack together your own homekit stuff you know they just don't want to lose ground in there they know that enthusiasts drive a lot of these platforms so there's there's things that are very core essential to their vision and their business and then there are things that are for lack of a better word hobbies and homekit is is you know they've put a placeholder there they've got people using it but it's still hobby for them they got to be in the space yeah I think that you have to have a foot in the door wearables are the same way definitely what story would you like to talk about that we haven't already been addressed oh I mean there was so much from WWDC but I mean I think that we've run the gamut here you know there's new hardware out um new Macbook uh we ran a review um you can check out the the 13-inch Macbook without touch bar uh we will be having in the coming days uh MacBook Pro reviews um uh with touch bar and we also had the 12-in MacBook review and then obviously we we talked about the iPad Pros the 10.5 and 12.9 those will be coming in the coming days as well so keep your eyes peeled for him all right uh I should mention that by the way I own in spirit of full disclosure I own some Apple stock and uh so take it with a grain of salt take it for what you will but this is I do not own shares and apple or any of the companies that I cover and on that bombshell this is episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast and Neil where can people find you on the internet you can find my musings on appleinsider.com uh including a very article that said to only install iOS 11 beta 1 if you hate yourself um and you can yell at me about it and tell me I'm an idiot on Twitter at this is Neil Neil all right I'm Victor marks and thank you for joining usyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Neil Hughes welcome back Neil Victor how's it going pretty well how are you doing doing all right doing all right good and I hope all of our listeners are too so it's been a little while since I last talked to you and in that time I know that that I've installed iOS 11 you've installed iOS 11 and you've got a load of new devices around that you're trying it out on so why don't we Dive Right In and start by talking about some of those devices that you've got in front of you well let me clarify um I'm only running iOS 11 on two devices the new hardware um that we've been reviewing um is we review it as is out of the box so okay so for example a 10.5 in iPad you're running the OS that it comes with the iOS 10 103.3 or whatever it is yeah right because that's the fair way to review it at this time right that's how it comes that's how people are going to experience it out of the box that's the right way to look at it right MH okay so then let me ask um I'm going to separate this out first of all let's talk about the 10.5 in iPad what's what's your experience like with it out of the box um so the 10.5 in iPad is really nice I'm working on the review right now um and it may actually be up by the time people are listening to this so be sure to go to Apple Insider and check out my full review um I have been a proponent of the 12.9 in iPad for a couple years now since it launched in late 2015 um and the 9.7 in was just a little too small um this 10.5 I think is a much better form factor of the 9.7 uh they accomplish this by reducing the bezel somewhat it's not entirely reduced they're still a little bit on the sides and more on the top and bottom but uh the 10.5 in um is just a good size uh in terms of the onscreen keyboard and just the real estate that you have to really take advantage of it going from the 12.9 back to the 9.7 always felt kind of cramped um so I I really like the form factor I still prefer the larger size for what I use my tablet for but I think for a lot of people they're going to be very happy with this especially because the bezel size was reduced so it's not that much bigger than a 9.7 in your hand it doesn't really feel bigger you put them side by side and you can see the difference but it just really feels like the same size and just a little bit more space on the screen uh easier to type the keyboard is just that that little much bigger um I wait I I want to ask how is the keyboard because this was the thing that they said during the worldwide developer conference keynote was that this was the device that was the right size to be able to have a full screen fulls siiz onscreen keyboard yeah it's just big enough to to have a full-size virtual keyboard so in the 9.7 in it's a little undersized which makes it a little tricky typing on the 12.9 obviously you have plenty of real estate and they can even have a virtual number row which I love uh this is not the same doesn't have the full number row and all that um but it does have full size equivalent virtual keys on the screen uh which does make typing easier uh if you're a touch typist like me um It's relatively easy to type on an iPad screen um and this offers kind of the best of of all worlds with the full size but you can also hold it in portrait mode and and do the split keyboard with your thumbs and stuff like that I mean it's really uh pretty awesome in terms of Versatility so what's your word per minute like oh I don't know whatever I I I I haven't checked it but it's I mean it's fast I don't I don't look at the keyboard like I don't use the backlight on my keyboard or anything like that um it's not I I I've been typing for a very long time I write for a living so okay well I mean I uh I've been typing for a very long time but I've never done formal typing practice and so I type it about 50 words per minute mhm um what I like about using using the 12-in iPad I have yet to experience the 10.5 but with the 12-in iPad and Landscape I I can touch type about as well as I type with uh a traditional keyboard mhm yeah where with the 9.7 in I would I would be feeling cramped and I would miss keys and things like that the the thing that I know is that for a lot of people who write for a living who use the iPad Pro as their computer that they prefer the 9.7 because it fits so well in a bag right yeah the the the 12.9 is it's it's big um 9.7 10.5 you know with with the size change on the bezels and stuff this is equivalent people are going to be very happy you're getting a good amount more real estate diagonally Without Really adding to the size of the device you you're not really going to notice the device unless you're hold them side by side it's the same weight um this is a very good compromise that that Apple made with the little bit extra size here um to get you know having that full-size virtual keyboard makes a big difference obviously I can't type as fast on a virtual keyboard as I can on a physical keyboard there are more mistakes but if I'm not sitting down and you know writing more in peace and I'm just you know responding to something doing an email whatever um you know it's just it's that much better when you have the keyboard but really the size difference is is nice but really the main difference with these iPads that makes them kind of a a must must have in my eye uh and the reason that I'm personally considering now upgrading my 12.9 in to the latest model uh despite some frustrations with some of the changes is um the the new what they call the promotion display uh is absolutely amazing it runs 120z 120 HZ display yes yeah and like as soon as you turn this thing on and start going through you know the setup process and it just jumping in between the menus is like it it's just a very big difference it's a noticeable difference right off the bat um you just it's fluid when you switch between uh app home screens when you're scrolling when you're reading all that like you don't even it's one of those things that you don't even realize like almost like before we had re displays we had these low resolution displays it was like oh this is a great screen and you don't realize that it could be better until you get a r display and then you're like oh and then you can't go back I feel almost the same way not quite the same way but almost the same way about the 120 htz display um you you notice it when you go back to a screen that doesn't have it the scrolling and and the zooming and and all that kind of stuff um and not just a visual benefit from this but also uh responsiveness for the apple pencil um is more fluid because of this um higher uh Hertz on the display it just the the frame rate uh is buttery smooth it is stunning it stands out it gets your attention and it looks great so your your verdict is is yeah you're you're thinking strongly about upgrading to the 10.5 in from the 12.9 no I'm I'm going think about upgrading my 12.9 from the 2015 model to the current model now um my reasons for wanting to do that are mostly because of the display uh oh and the new processor is really fast but it's like the last one was that slow but I mean the benchmarks on this thing like rival and MacBook Pro it's crazy it's I mean it's unbelievable how fast they've made these custom processors in here they're they're getting to another level I mean nobody's in the same level when it comes to to competing with with the iPad nobody none of these tablets out there are really in the same playing field it's it's crazy there are a few caveats and um I'm I'm a little frustrated by it um the biggest one for me is especially with the 12.9 in model you're going to drop $800 on this tablet right and it's powerful and it's capable and it's awesome and it has usb3 uh data and charging speeds on the lightning port and it ships with a 12 wat brick the same the same power brick that you know shipped with the first iPad 7 years ago um even though that's that's like the iPad Mini shipping with the 1 amp phone charger brick it I'm not really sure where Apple did this I think I think that the reason that they did it is because they don't want to make a new USB 3 power brick with a full-size USB port and the 29 watt uh brick that or you know I guess plug whatever you want to call it not really a brick but uh the one that comes with the Transformer if you will yes the the 29 watt adapter that ships with the 12-in MacBook doesn't have a fullsize USB port it has USBC so my theory on this is that apple didn't want consumers who buy a new iPad to freak out when it comes with a USBC to lightning cable and they don't want to make a new power brick with fullsize USB because that would be kind of going backwards so they're kind of between a rock and a hard not at all not at all they they just are they also don't want to have to put one more thing in the Box well I I have I regularly use a USBC to usba adapter my my my USB phone is a my USBC phone is a Huawei Nexus 6p which does fast charging over USBC which is a brilliant thing and the power brick for it has just like Apple's a USBC connector on it and sometimes I don't want to charge the the Huawei sometimes I want to charge other things and so I have a USBC to usba adapter belon makes them there are tons of reliable companies that make them and you just plug that into your USBC adapter and then you plug plug in your USB cable usba cable and it works just fine and I think that the USB connector is the reason that we're not getting the 29 watt charger because Apple doesn't want to ship it with a dongle and they realize that a lot of people are still charging their iPads through their computer I mean I'm sure they have market research that shows X number of people are doing this are they I would like to know that or or they have multiple power bricks that they use or whatever there's some reason that they cheaped out with the 12w adapter but you got to realize um the new the new iPads are more powerful than ever right they've got these souped up processors in there that are crazy and they shrink all the components in there so they can fit in larger batteries so the larger 12.9 in iPad Pro went from a 39w hour battery to like a 41w hour battery and this thing takes forever to charge on a 12 wat adap I know it takes forever plug it in and you wait overnight yeah I mean it and you know it gets 10 hours of battery life and the idling is fine all okay great this thing needs to be shipped with a 29 wat adapter and the fact that Apple didn't do it really ticks me off because the the Brick itself is $50 and then the cable if you want to get the USBC to lightning cable is under 25 bucks so I spent $800 on an iPad Pro I want to uh or 650 on the 10.5 in model which is $50 more than it was last year now I got to spend another 75 bucks if I want to charge it at the faster rate uh put it in the Box Apple I mean let's let's just move on and stop cheaping out with this stuff shipping it with a 12wt adapter is absolutely inexcusable and very frustrating to me and I think an oversight by Apple and it's really the the only major ding I have against a product that is otherwise pretty great I mean pretty much Flawless Hardware the only problem I can find with this Hardware is the stupid camera bump like do we really need a you know a 12 megapixel camera with flash on a tablet like who's taking these photos with their tablet just put a flush camera in there make it 8 megapixel no iPad Pro like you're holding up the boom box as John cusac did right that's that's exactly what's going on here is people are videotaping and filming events by holding this thing up above their heads right I like that it has the camera on there but it doesn't need to be that powerful of a camera you can skimp out a little bit there and put the stupid right adapter in the box with the right power Brak that that's my only problem with this Hardware here and it's even more egregious with the 12.9 in model because it at $800 to not be able to include a 29 watt adapter in there for this huge battery it's got to recharge I mean they at least should put it in with the 12.9 in model the fact that it ships with a 12 watt adapter is is insane to me and I think that I'm going to give the 12.9 in uh model a slightly lower score than the um than the 10.5 in model pretty much solely because of that because that that you know when it takes your tablet overnight to charge it's it's inexcusable it's it's it's that's a bad user experience and there's no need for it to ship like that out of the box it's not like these cables and bricks are costing Apple that much that it's going to eat in their margins to ship it in the Box for them I think that that is the main issue with the 12.9 it's not it's not even the tablet itself it's just the accessories that they ship in the box and it's a shame that they do it that way so you think about $800 for the tablet 160 for the keyboard 100 for the pencil and then another 75 for the cable and brick you got a really awesome setup there but you spent over a, bucks on it um it's getting a little pricey at that point but I mean I think it's worth it I think it's a great product I'm I'm very happy with this update um I think that they did a really good job with it but just stop cheaping out on the Brick Apple now wait does does for my own clarification does the 10.5 in work with USBC and and and the the the USB three fast charging yes so this is something that happened that was strange there were a lot of differences between the 12.9 in model and the 10 point or the 9.7 that came out uh last year in late 2015 so the 12.9 in came out first it features USB 3 uh 29 wat fast charging um but it and it had a M9 chip but for some reason did not include always on hey I won't say her name um she who El shall not be named is that well cuz everything's going to turn on if I do it um then the next year 2016 early in the year they shipped the 9.7 in model they did have hey you know who uh always on without being plugged in um even though it had the same processor which made no sense to me it gained the uh true tone display which the 12.9 in did not have but it did not gain the USB 3 lightning Port it only had the usb2 lightning Port which means it didn't have the Quick Charge capabilities which wasn't that big of a deal because it's got a smaller battery um you know you plug that in on the the 12 watt it charges slower but it it's fine it doesn't need it doesn't need as much to to Juice It Up uh but this year both iPad Pros have been released at the same time both have feature parody so they both have the same processor uh they both have the same cameras uh they both have true tone displays now which is new for the 12.9 in they both have the 120 HZ Pro motion display and they both have usb3 lightning connectors for fast charging if you want to pay 75 bucks to get it okay thank you for laying that all out for me yes so your personal preference is to get the 12in and the 10 in is a strong the 10 and 1 half is a strong Contender for people who have the 9.7 in I think most people uh will be very happy with the 9 or with a 10.5 in I think that some size of iPad at this point right oh yeah I I mean I think that the 10.5 is going to be the compromises that they made to get to the larger dis Sizer are not that big of a deal the the the funny thing to me is the the thing that undercuts the iPad Pro more than anything is the $330 9.7 in iPad because a lot of people buying these tablets aren't going to connect to keyboard don't want to spend $100 on the mouse don't want to spend another $75 to fast charge They Don't Really Care pencil they don't care about the 120 HZ display they don't uh care that this display is not laminated the glass they don't care that it's a little bit thicker because you get basically everything that you would need the the A9 chip is plenty fast uh that $330 is packed with value and for $650 on a 10.5in iPad Pro uh the value is not quite as packed and I think that the main thing that undercuts and makes it really the standout device in Apple's lineup is that at 330 bucks uh that thing is a is a bargain it's a Ste I I think that I think that that is the the greatest value currently in Apple's entire product lineup let me ask a question yes because this is something I had not previously thought about so you take that $330 iPad yeah you put iOS 11 on it does it gain the dock and the multitasking capabilities that we saw demonstrated in the keynote all of it say what all of it tell me one more time it gets all of it I installed iOS 11 on an iPad Air 2 that I have here and it works great it's awesome awesome really really the $330 iPad is the best value in Apple's product line that was that was one of the things that that in the past you know some of them got the uh the the slide over where you could have the iPhone app running in a strip alongside but you couldn't pull it all the way and have two evenly spaced out iPad apps running side by side and uh you got an A9 processor with 2 gigs of RAM and it handles it all be yep you can multitask you can split view you can slide over you get the DOT you get all of it huh yeah so then then Conn and if you don't want the SMART connector which it's not like there's any SMART connector accessories available other than keyboards connect a Bluetooth keyboard um get a Bluetooth stylus if you really want something to draw with I mean there are compromises made obviously to get to that $330 price point but that is so cheap compared to you think about when the iPad first launch it was 500 bucks now the the pro is 650 we're down to 330 with a with a 9.7 in screen the the the iPad Pro is a great buy for the people that want to take advantage of the features on it somebody like me who really likes you know the larger screen and and likes the the 120 HZ display and the SMART connector all that kind of stuff great but for most people they don't even need the 10.5 in just get the 9.7 inch wow the entry level iPad is the way to go for a lot of people and I think that that's gonna be I think it's gon to Bear out in the sales too that is something that is really quite something okay but it's a great lineup that they have right now if you think about it you know a lot of differentiation at the different price points to justify um where they're at I think that the the and with iOS 11 coming uh the iPad is in a very strong position right now much better than it's been in years well so we should talk about that we iOS 11 changes things for iPad more drastically than it does for some of the other devices right it's the biggest change ever for iPad yeah you you get a doc and we haven't had a doc on iOS before the doc is divided into two sections it's the applications that are are Main Stays across one side of it and the other is predictive things where uh Apple sort of decides what they think is going to come next it includes things like handoff and and other stuff in there right MH and long pressing on these things can uh can can show Windows of what's available there it can also help you with your your files as you're uh or Dragon drop and dragon drop uh starting the slide over stuff you can actually do four tasks at once uh on the screen at the same time with iOS 11 even on a 9.7 in so let's let's count first of all you get split view which is two apps right mhm and then you can float another view on top using the slide over style right and if you have the 12.9 in iPad Pro I don't know if you can do this on the 10. 5 because I didn't update iOS 11 but uh if you have the 12.9 you can still interact with the apps that are in the background in addition to the slide over one and then if you throw in picture and picture uh that's four apps at once your your counting video is running as a as a separate app there correct because well it is so okay that's that's impressive and then obviously you know things like location music and whatever could run in the background too so you could run more than four apps at once but you can have four apps on screen at once and it doesn't feel cluttered or weird or excessive wow now let me ask this can you I I have the feeling that with these big changes that there's going to be need to the need for some tutorials on on how these things work how does drag and drop work how does markup work yeah when you take a screenshot right do you think that Apple's going to supply some of these these um things to help people learn about them I mean I think so you can see that they're doing you know classes throughout the day at their retail stores now um obviously there's the tips app that's installed on iOS devices um you know and when who knows what it'll be like when it actually ships but you know uh I'm sure that they'll have stuff on their website and obviously we'll have stuff on Apple Insider but the important thing to remember when it comes to any of these features that are being added is these platforms get more mature is the power user features never take away the Simplicity of the platform platform um you can navigate an iPhone quite well without ever knowing that control center exists and the only thing that you would miss out on is other than the convenience of having it there is the built-in flashlight because there's no other way to access in the operating system but you could download an app to do that too so um it's important that as you add power user features you don't take away the Simplicity of how to do these things you still have a dedicated Settings app that you can dig into if you want to turn off Bluetooth and go into airplan mode and whatever um and that's how you move a platform forward without alienating the users that appreciate the Simplicity and have gotten used to it I will say that one of the things that I was slightly disappointed by was that I I enjoyed using the uh the the flicking action in the multitasking view yeah to quit apps to dismiss applications and in iOS 11 on iPad that's no longer the behavior you have to long press tap on X in a corner to dismiss an application I agree with you but it's important that people remember that this is beta and things can and will change before launch so if you're testing the beta um and you're a registered developer um Apple encourages people to send feedback and so if you don't like that change I would say send send a message to Apple but I agree with you um being able to quickly close apps is something that is currently missing uh in beta 1 one thing that is great though with the multitasking view um um is you can have apps that are done in split view are in a permanent state so for example if I have uh one task open that is split between Safari and slack uh I then multitask to another uh combination of music and calendar uh both in split view they they remain persistent in that state so when you go back to the other app it remembers that you have those two paired together it's pretty cool yeah now these this is something that on on Apple they've always called this a spaces in Mac OS 10 and Mac OS it's called spaces it's really an implementation of a concept that's been around for decades called virtual desktops and you know on on traditional computers you'd arrange your applications the way you'd like on a virtual desktop and then switch to a new desktop or a new space as Apple calls it and arrange new applications and this is the first time that it's come to iPad what's cool about this as you say is that they remember which applications are in a space or in a virtual desktop just as they do on the the traditional computer uh you know this was something we were doing in Unix God 20 years ago 30 well 25 years ago and we're doing in BOS 20 years ago um the I I you know I keep slack and messages in the same space because they're both messaging applications and I do that on on iOS 11 just as well as I do it in uh Mac OS and there are still some things about what happens to an application when it's been placed alongside another one in split view or in slide over mode in a space on iOS 11 that's that's I think a symptom of it being still beta 1 um for example when I start using messaging apps in messages but messages is that small strip of a a slide overview yeah I I lose the keyboard and I lose the uh the the messages app area takes up the whole bottom width of the landscape view uh overriding slack it's it's uh there's something that they have to still work out about um this the space that things should take when they're in a different type of view yeah that's one thing that especially with a 12.9 in that I would like to see improved in multitasking and I don't think we'll get it this year obviously since iOS 11 is anounced but maybe a iOS 12 type thing is uh especially if you're holding the device in um like a portrait mode um and you slide or do a split view with an app um given how tall the screen is you get this very awkward long skinny you know whatever it is for that app and for some for some apps that might look fine but for a lot of them it's a lot of real estate that's really not necessary what would be nice to see is something that operates like a combination of slide over with um the way that picture and picture works so imagine that if you were able to slide over um an app uh like let's say messages would be a great one um you could slide it over but it would float in the corners and you could resize it as bigger or smaller but it wouldn't have to take up the entire uh height of the screen um it would be in more of a iPhone size so you know like uh 169 box that sits in the bottom right corner you can drag it over the bottom left corner and it stays in a persistent State on top of the screen as you jump between apps so imagine that you were in a conversation with somebody and messages or slack or whatever you have it on the bottom left of your screen you hit the home button it's still kind of sitting over there you can float it and move it as needed when you're reading and moving around you can pull up two apps at once and it still stays you know floating over there just like the picture and picture mode works I think that would be a really great multitasking addition yeah but so to to tie it together right to bring this to to ahead Apple said for years that we were in the post-pc world that was the Steve Jobs line we were in the post PC era uh Tim Cook has repeatedly said that the iPad is their vision of computing in the future it's their clearest vision of what Computing should be and I would say that this this what they've shown us so far with iOS 11 delivers on that promise would you agree yes we still have a long way to go but the improved multitasking the uh addition of a file app un Universal you know to save your files and access them between apps and stuff like that um make a huge difference the doc uh switching between apps all that kind of stuff uh it's a huge difference but I think that the last missing piece is some form of a cursor input for text manipulation um yeah and and there's been you know there there have been people who've said that holding the your finger down on the keyboard and that turns it into cursor input selection is is the answer to that uh I would I would agree with you that there's still some room for refinement there but I would be more than okay with mouse and trackpad input that comes with the caveat that no apps on the app store or native can require it because touch has to be the primary mode of input for this you can attach a keyboard if you want but you don't need a keyboard you could connect a pointer accessory of some type if you want but you don't need it same with pencil same with everything else as long as the core functionality of the product continues to work who does it hurt if we add it in h it does sound it does feel like retrograde in some ways though well I I saw an interesting concept A few weeks ago before iOS 11 was announced where people were talking about what would happen if they had a trackpad on the new U magic or um yeah yeah that was a grber thing he was talking about yeah and and the idea was um do it like it is on tvos so rather than having a physical pointer on the screen um if you're on the home screen using a trackpad uh the app icons would you know it would go between them as you dragged your finger around it would select different ones as you moved around yeah right and and that would make some sense I mean I could see that working but it doesn't change the fact that you would still need some form of just specific cursor input for text entry interesting uh you could do that just as the same way that you use the keyboard on screen with with the TV remote selecting letters mhm yeah and and let's not forget that you know Apple has caved on things like they originally said your games cannot require a controller and then they said okay if you want to make a game that requires a controller go for it um and you know remember when you couldn't use the volume button to take pictures or you could say that they caved on having a stylus right you could say so when when we talk about them caving it's that's that's when I go back to what is their vision for the future what is what's their real goal here right and their real goal was for people to replace place the computer with the iPad and for some professionals especially digital artists uh when you're saying that the iPad is a wonderful tablet for drawing you can't tell them that and then not give them a pen right you know the the the we will n if you see a stylist they've failed was saying that if you see a stylist for inputting text and for tapping on icons it's a failure not if you see a stylist for doing digital artwork it's a failure right so they knew that they needed to have one in order to get to the vision of this thing being the tool for Professionals for digital artists as professionals let's say um do they need to have a trackpad for that to Work N it depends let's see what we're talking about in terms of tasks and jobs to be done right when when we talk about the other things that they've backpedal on uh you know when when they said this is the very best camera that's in your pocket but you don't have a shutter button you have an on screen visual one so now you have to look at the screen as opposed to your subject or or you know you can't take your photo nearly as fast because you have to find and tap on the right area of the screen uh using the volume key was the right answer mhm it's it's it's not about drawing a firm Line in the Sand and saying we'll never do that it's about figuring out is this something that has to be done in order to get to the goal right what is Apple's goal here what are we actually trying to accomplish who are doing it for and what do we need need to do and if that involves backpedaling so be it I I've been saying for years now here on the podcast you know Apple needs to take the training wheels off of the iPad that the hardware is there the software needs to catch up this is a huge leap forward for the software huge if if the $330 iPad does all that you say then then haven't they just done that aren't the training wheels falling off now they are yeah I I there's still a ways to go but it's a huge step in the right direction absolutely I am impressed I want to change gears completely and I I'm going to go ahead and bring this up because we were just talking about Apple's vision and what they're trying to accomplish let's talk about homepod so I I I I bring this up because I've I've been looking at for a long time the different types of voice speakers that are Voice Assistant speaker products that are out there Alexa products Amazon Echo products the Google Home Products um the different voice assistants you know Viv that turned into Bixby or Viv that got bought by Samsung who released Bixby I'm still not entirely certain that Viv is the basis for Bixby um things like this and I like the idea of a voice assistant so they introduced this speaker and they're calling at homepod and they emphasize its music features first and oh by the way it has series second and that was interesting uh the other thing that's interesting is they they the 349 price tag right Which is far higher than Alexa or Google home so what is the vision what is what is Apple's goal by introducing this thing you know maybe it's a a backdoor way into putting Siri in your home in a you know more permanent way the that they're pitching it as more of a music device than a Siri device and I think that makes sense for a number of reasons namely the price for $350 they can't say this is an echo competitor they have to talk about how they differentiate it and I think that having a premium speaker has a market I don't know how big that market is but um for somebody like myself who is a big fan of AirPlay and has speakers throughout my home to listen to music I think it's a great product um and uh I I really like that you know the iPod Hi-Fi was an earlier stab at this and largely a failure um I own one and it was a great product but the market for it wasn't that big people really didn't see a need and this product may do the same thing I don't know how it's going to pan out for them but I'm excited for it because I want uh some form of an echo competitor that is not you know listening for what I want to buy on Amazon and I want a great speaker so yeah well so there there are a couple of things to unpack here I I think the first thing is that there are a limited number of of companies that can sell an audio product for 350 bucks Y and if I had to name them I'd say their names are Bose Bowers and Wilkins beats um Sonos Sonos and and I start to run out of answers after that don't I yeah I mean there's some other Niche like I have my master Dynamic headphones that I love Master Dynamic lione libratone is pretty good in there right they they can do it senis uh uh n no they make Studio headphones they make okay cans but they don't make speakers not really um um oh who was that weird one that Mikey reviewed that I saw in the New York airport oh um they have a store in SoHo here too actually near the Apple Store it's called uh they sell it at the Apple Store too I think it's crazy yeah uh I can't think the name of it right now but yeah it's um devet Phantom that's the devet that thing is it's awesome uh it's absurd it's beautiful and it's great but yeah yeah I mean that's that's super Niche that's beyond Niche that's 10 people in the world own one exactly um right so I I have not used all the fingers on two hands yet is is how far we've come and we've run out of people who can do that so the question is is first of all can apple do it after having failed the last time around Grant I grant you that was 10 years ago right that was that was uh 10 or 11 years ago it was 2008 basically so and and second of all so who who are the people that are supposed to buy this they're not Sonos users they're Apple music users right there are 27 million Apple music subscribers so what percentage of that do they think they're going to sell this thing to you know how how do you measure success on something like this right I mean we look at the iPhone and obviously that's a colossal success um but then you start to go further down Apple's product lineup and it's like uh you know the iPad sales are down but they're still moving 10 million in a quarter that's pretty impressive um you know Apple watch they're not announcing numbers but even if they're selling two or three million in a in a quarter that's a pretty good number um they just refresh the MacBook Air the the outgoing non retina the 13in because they want to maintain that you know sub $1,000 price how many of those are they selling I mean they're selling four 5 million Max in a quarter are they selling $500 ,000 MacBook airs are they selling 200,000 MacBook airs I don't know um how many of these do they need to sell with the homep Pod do they need to sell half a million do they need to sell 5 million do they need to sell you know I I don't know how you consider it to be a success because I don't know that it really matters that much um I think that as long as the product does what it aims to do um and can you know the bean counters at Apple I think that we don't need to worry about the success of it that much I think it's going to be fine I think there's a built-in audience of you know probably a million people they're going to buy this thing no matter what and apple continue to make it and it'll kind of be one of their Niche products you know it'll be something off in the corner at the Apple Store I I don't see this being this isn't this product isn't that big of a deal for most so so when you say they can sell a million units that's fine what I'm thinking is that's probably just a an extrapolation of scale because when I was making products years ago I used to say look we can sell 50,000 units of anything to nerds right you you you can make some off-the-wall wacky thing that barely even functions and sell 50,000 of them it's it's getting past that and selling to to people who are on the other side of the early adoption curve that is the difficult thing so that's your hund that's that's your million units is that Apple can sell a million of these things to anyone just because they're apple and they're that big the question I have is is so what's their vision for this thing is their Vision to sell it to their apple music subscribers to listen to Apple music through is their Vision that this thing is the missing piece of the puzzle in homekit um is is this the thing that fixes AirPlay for multiroom what what what's what's the purpose of this thing and why are they making it other than you know someone convinced Tim Cook that they wanted to make music stuff again I think all the above I think that uh it's a space that they wanted to get into because they don't want to get pushed out by Amazon um they need to offer something that competes there's clearly a market for it I don't think that they necessarily know what it's going to become they're they're marketing it as a speaker because that justifies the price but we may see two years down the road a you know home pod Nano that cost $99 and doesn't have the same sound quality but does you know or whatever um we may see you know a high-end um homepod Pro for all we know I mean who knows where this product goes but I think if you look at the success that they've had with the Apple watch that might give you an idea of their ability to kind of uh pivot and focus on what's working and diminish what is not workking um I think that that's but that's precisely what concerns me is because the Apple launch launched the the Apple watch rather launched without a a super Clear Vision or statement for what the thing should do and why you should buy it right it it was it does all these things and if you hear one of those things that resonates with you then you should buy it as opposed to Apple being able to tell you clearly like they did with the iPad this is the best way to sit back and have a relaxed Computing experience was the first thing that that jobs pitched at in 2010 you know you if if homepod is another one of these things like the watch where we make this thing it does all this stuff and by the way if one of those resonates with you you might want to buy it then we've got another two years of Apple figuring out what homepod is for I mean I think my biggest problem with homepod in terms of being a big you know multi-million selling success is if I give you $350 let's imagine if the the hod is out today it's in the store I give you $350 you walk into an Apple store and I say buy one thing with this $350 what are you going to buy are you going to buy the homepod are you going to buy a 9.7 inch iPad yeah I'm saying are you going to buy a $350 Apple watch are you g to buy because I mean there are a lot of products that for that price in Apple's product lineup are way more appealing I think that an Apple Watch is more appealing to more people I think that iPad is more way more appealing to more people um so I think that you know the homep Pod is not going to be a move the needle for Apple it's just it's not that kind of product it's a speaker and I think that as long as they have that goal for it in mind um and I think that you know unlike years ago when the Hi-Fi came out um I think this is more of a storm that they could weather with enough cash in the bank that it doesn't matter and much like the Apple TV was a hobby before they launched an app store for it uh this can be a presence for them and a way for them to get their foot in the door in a market that they see becoming a bigger deal in the future but while that shakes out and while consumers continue to get comfortable with the idea of a speaker in their home you I was just watching uh um Cole bear the other night and uh um uh an actress was on there and she was talking about how uh she you know threw her Amazon Echo in the closet because she didn't like that it was constantly listening to her and her kids around the house and stuff that's a very common comment that I hear from a lot of people people are not entirely comfortable with these products and that might be one of the reasons why Apple priced it the way that they did designed it the way that they did and are marketing it the way that they are because I think that there's still a reluctance from consumers to have that sort of a product and I think that maybe they're letting the market shake out and giving it time until people get more comfortable with Siri constantly listening to you to really uh you know take the training wheels off well and they said that Siri listening to you doesn't send anything to them until you intentionally direct it to that is exactly why they made it a point to emphasize that yeah um the same reason that the Apple TV requires you to press a button on the remote for it to to talk to Siri on that Apple makes all these decisions for very conscious reason and I'm sure they have all kinds of internal market research that shows that there is a reason to do this is that good for Apple's long-term success though right one of the things we've talked about in the past is that you you to for machine learning and for uh artificial intelligence you need to have large data sets right are are they intentionally crippling themselves by take by by planting their flag on this hill I don't know um you know there were reports of people that work in AI that you know were leaving apple or were moving on to other places because they couldn't even publish their research which is a big part of you know working in machine learning and stuff like that they've since relaxed on some of that I think that Apple takes a very conservative slow approach to these things like we talked about before with the iPad and bringing in a St or the pencil and stylus all that kind of stuff and I think there's something to be said for that because um it allows us to kind of pause and think about these things and and do them in a way that's not so halfhazard and and is smart and is measured uh and done right and I think that Apple's approach is going to be okay because not only do they have the brand cach a and and people that are are buying in but it's still a a niche market it's not like it's out of hand that you know it's gone it's not like Windows phone coming to Market and trying to catch up with iOS you know like it's not like everybody's got an echo uh this is a thing that Amazon is pushing but it's still a novelty and if it becomes a thing and it becomes you know like they're selling tens of millions of them or whatever uh Apple's going to be in on the ground floor at this point well and Apple's never been afraid of being with the right product and this thing the the homepod has an A8 chip in it which is not too shabby uh presumably it's going to have capability of software updates and considering that Siri depends a lot on the cloud uh this is the kind of product that could be updated and remain relevant for years to come as the market evolves and changes and as people expect more and want more and demand more uh you could expect to see the homepod become whatever it needs to be uh in much the same way that watchos was reimagined after it was you know refocused with what people were using the product for my one thought is is that you know Google and Amazon are taking very different approaches to adoption here uh Amazon and and Google are both encouraging third party manufacturers to build their AI into third party speakers and third party products right you you know into the EOB thermostat which has Alexa built into it or the uh the hmdx Jam speaker that has Alexa built into it or the the ones that I sent you a picture of last week that have the ability to pair multiple units MH right there there's an Amazon Alexa enabled speaker that you can pair multiple units with and have multi-room audio going on um you know we're not that far away from someone like a Sonos a reputable speaker manufacturer building in the voice assistant into their good speakers right but I mean it's not it's not like the barrier for entry for Amazon Echo is high you can get a DOT for what like $60 or something you can get a DOT for 39 bucks if you have Prime and get the coupon so there you go I mean so yes is it an approach that these companies are taking by letting anybody install anything sure does it really matter I don't think so well the idea is that you don't have to necessarily end up buying a dedicated speaker unit you can buy just whatever accessories you're going to be buying anyway and oh look they all have that one assistant built in yeah I I get I I don't see that moving you uh you bought a light bulb and by the way it's got electri yeah great just what I wanted right this is like my my 4K Sony TV with Android TV on it it's like just I want to unall it I want it gone well yeah and you can't it's terrible are it's like it lags just from you navigating you are on the so you you discovered that it lags right you discovered that it's unsuitable and you don't like it but a lot of people shop with these things in mind or or shop and see that as a bonus right it's easy it's got a button on the remote it says Netflix I mean that's why they do it well and TCL that makes the uh the Amazon Fire TV they for years they made Roku TVs and had Roku built in and at CES they showed and they now selling a TV that that has the essentially an Amazon Firebox built into the TV I mean the things will get there eventually but the fact that you know you spend this kind of money on a TV and then the menu lags it's like this is crazy here's here's what the problem is right the problem is that the the cell phone is an every two-year device yeah sometimes more frequent sometimes less frequent but more or less it's an every two-year device yeah right would you agree yes okay what is your buying cycle for television five plus years closer to 10 for most people right and so do you want an Android phone essentially in your TV no after 5 to 10 years not getting updates and generally being lousy especially as either the apps are updated and make it all worse or the apps are not updated and it just continues to be terrible well this is the same problem that exists in a number of other markets whether it's PCS whether it's TVs whether it's tablets all these companies want to get faster product Cycles with faster upgrades but because they're so expensive and because the devices are so capable people aren't upgrading as fast as they upgrade their phone now well no we never changed TV TV Cycles as 10 years has always been about the case right but the the TV makers would like to change that is what I'm saying oh they absolutely would and that's 3D yes you see all these nonsense features and it goes way way back when it you know when we were starting out with HD and then they started doing 120 Herz because that does you can divide 120 by 24 to get 24p uh true cinematic frame rate on a film and then they said well we'll do 240 HZ and it's like what's the difference between 120 and 240 HZ if nothing's running at that resolution uh 240 HZ you know like it was like okay you need it for sports yeah it doesn't really and then you know uh Auto Motion Plus and these other gimmicky soap oper effects and uh then they went 3D and they went Smart TVs and now it's 4K and now it's curv displays and 8K and God knows what else they're doing um there are all kinds of gimmicks being thrown out there in hopes of getting people to buy and none of them have caught on there was a huge change over in televisions when HD came out and they've been trying to rekindle that magic ever since and none of them have worked not even smart TVs well that's because Smart TVs are universally the smart features are kind of terrible right the smart features never see the updates they should to keep TV spies on you and yes your TVs can spy on you and they spy interesting ways right they're not they're not using a camera and actually spying you all although some use the uh the microphone to to listen and kind of things but but what they're doing is they're capturing frames from what you're watching and then recognizing that image to report back what you've been watching and that's terrifying well you have choices you can turn off the Wi-Fi to your smart TV and not use it and use some other third party box on the other on the HDMI cable right you can plug in your Apple TV or your Roku or whatever and uh and if you have Wi-Fi turned off it can't capture here's my question since we're talking about TVs yeah we have a new Apple now post WWDC homepod I think we both agree is a pretty Niche product um iMac Pro how many of those are they going to sell uh They're Not Afraid right now to get into some uh uh areas where they're not what if they sold the TV I mean we're we're sitting here talking about how crappy the market is you never go full Monster you don't have to ever go full Gene I mean I don't think they're going to but uh they are getting back into the monitor business because they tried to hand it off to LG and LG botched it um so they're going to get back in the monitor business they're going to be having panels made for them in you know whatever so they can sell with the Mac Pro that comes out next year H you know up up the size of 60 in I um I'd buy it you would you would too I would not really you want these dumb smart TVs they got right now that are spying on you no I'd rather have dumb TVs that don't have any smarts to them at all well good luck bu them because they don't make many of them anymore you got you can get they're hard to find especially on the high end you want well that's just it is they're not what you want because they aren't the high-end right They're Not Gon to have 4K and they're not gonna yep yeah and so we ask why is Apple getting to the homepod market well this is one reason right here because you want the convenience of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the creepiness and and garbage that comes with it that is a reason for Apple to get into the homepod market on its own you want the capabilities of an Amazon Echo but you don't want all the garbage that goes with it and so for Apple they could just enter a market based on that just to say we're going to offer an alternative it's going to be a user a pro user experience you're going to be happy with this you're not going to be creeped out you're not going to think that it's weird uh I think that's a good justification for them to enter a market I'm okay with that not everything that they release has to be a home run not everything needs to to be the next iPhone they just need to make good products that people want that's true let's talk about arkit then sure the demos that we saw were that you could place objects on a table virtually you could have the lighting shift around them correctly they could pop up a an old west Cowboy town and have airplanes going around and buildings destroyed and things and they also showed us Pokémon go rendered with arkit um what are the best applications for this do you think um I think that you know we've talked about this many times before Apple's going to get into AR VR what are they going to do are they going to make them glasses are they going to make a helmet or whatever and and I kept saying no they're going to create a platform for people to do this and this is exactly what's happened um ways that you might see um it integrated into Apps well I mean you've already seen some of it now some of the more popular ones Pokemon go obviously and Snapchat with their filters um that kind of stuff um I don't know how valuable it is but people like it it's gwiz kind of neat kind of cool and it's not like the Snapchat filters are going away people love them so uh it's not a fad like Pokémon go was so I I think that you know to offer a platform to make it easy for developers to do that is in Apple's best interest because then if you want to have those kind of experiences um you need to get an iPhone and you know I I think that for 3D integration with like Maps uh they're talking about like indoor mapping kind of stuff uh imagine you know holding up your phone and being able to uh see where you're going you know some apps have done stuff like that um there there's all kinds of neat little gimmicks that you could do but I I don't know that it's going to be some sort of like gamechanging type thing uh but I think that to be the premier AR platform is good for Apple in the long run I agree that it is but I keep looking for ways that it just goes beyond entertainment you know are is is this simply something that people are going to use to develop more apps and their for charge more money and Apple's going to pay out more in the Apple Store and take their 30% or is this something that people can use to generate real real cash you know is this something that has retail applications is this something that has other business implications is something that's interesting to me and we saw that they did beacons remember beacons yeah right I beacons yeah they still do how they put yeah they still do them but you don't hear about them as as enabling business cases the way you used to right right the there was there was this idea for a while that everyone was going to put beacons in all their shops and as you'd walk through all their shops you'd get little announcements for offers and things like this and and that hasn't come to be hasn't come to fruition so you know I'm wondering does AR and does AR K enable new experiences and new new business cases that we haven't seen before I think that you know there could be some retail uses for it there could be some educational uses for it um obviously games and gimmicky stuff like that I don't think it's going to be essential uh I don't think that it's going to be you know a crucial part of the platform but I think it'll be popular and I think it'll help Drive iPhone sales because imagine if you know Snapchat filters or your Instagram pictures or whatever look that much better on an iPhone because not only does it have great Hardware Great camera great design everything else but there's certain software and and other capabilities within the device that you can't get on an Android phone um and especially stuff that you share like Snapchat uh that makes people want to buy in that makes people want to get more you know I've heard a lot of people say that the portrait mode you know is like a game changer for them on the 7 plus the Simplicity of it all that kind of stuff that's the kind of stuff that Apple's going to do with their platform to encourage the stickiness as they call it people to stick with it but also to draw on new people if you can imagine you know this fall with all these AR apps coming out and you can't get them on Android that's going to be a huge Boon for Apple yeah even more so than it already being the popular phone to have well you see all the YouTube videos that are out there now just with iOS 11 beta and the uh uh Unity or whatever engine from unreal um and you can demo the the AR stuff and people are you know just like putting up pretty basic videos of you know an object floating in the middle of a room or whatever and it works so well that and and this is just proof of concept to show developers how easy it's going to be for them to implement AR as that becomes true and developers start to integrate AR into their apps you're going to see better apps on iOS and that's going to result in more sales for Apple definitely and I feel like there's there's a lot of great places where this kind of AR and Casual gaming could work well together you know you could do things with the airplane trade table you could do you know all sorts of things as as having objects that are around all the time set the stage for the S stuff so it's it's going to be interesting I'm I'm just you know racking my brains to see where else goes and and how far is their Vision on this yeah I don't I it'll be interesting to see I I don't know like you said most of the stuff seems pretty gimmicky seems like games and stuff like that but it's fun let me let me throw this out there just to to annoy everyone who's ever thought about the the Apple car in Project Titan right we haven't heard a whole lot about that in a long while uh the last piece of news we had recently was a bit where uh Tim Cook let on that they were working on um automated driving mhm and what if the AR kit becomes the HUD the heads up display right that's interesting I I think your GPS navigation is broadcast onto the road as you drive yes signs are made signs are digitally enhanced to be more clear to let you know where you can exit Lane guidance whatever all of it yeah well I mean I'm just making that up as I go but it it seems like that's an you know may maybe what if what if AR kit is something they made for themselves for something like that and are now releasing to the rest of us because why not well imagine um in terms of uh film making or just home movies or photography right so a very popular app from years ago and one of the earlier I would hesitate to call it augmented reality but I guess that's what it is JJ Abrams team was behind it it's called action movie it's a popular IOS app and it just allowed you to have you know like a a character from a movie or something like an explosion or whatever and you could put it in whatever you were filming and it like was a you know mix of digital effects with what was going on in the real world you know you could have a missile fly over your shoulder and hit whatever is in front of you so take that to the next level with ar right uh you no longer need a green screen you no longer need a $10,000 camera and a rig and a set and all that kind of stuff you could do it in your home with your phone um you have a camera that can sense depth can figure out what's in the background remove it from the shot you can have an app that brings in 3D characters and has you interact with them and stuff um there's I mean again it's all gimmicky and really not really necessary but you could say that about most technology these days but that kind of stuff is really really cool and people are going to be sharing it put it on YouTube put it on Facebook put it on Instagram wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute because getting rid of green screen so the chroma keying which is what green screen is is there there's a bit of an art to it right you have the screen you have to select the right background you have to get your lighting so that it matches what you're doing with your light source in the background if you don't film it right then you can get green Reflections onto the skin that become hard to get out without taking out the extra skin there all kinds of little intricacies to doing green screen well right um and I have yet to find an app that I really like for doing it if if listeners have some recommendations I would be happy to hear them because I I do own a green screen if you will um and I have I've shot kid my kids in front of it and had them do things and then you know turned that into movies um and it's fun but being able to take away the green screen opens up a whole lot of possibilities right that could be so cool and that's they're not just fun possibilities they also become business pro possibilities because then they can be you know a part of industrial films that you shoot for work they can be part of you know your weather broadcast uh which is the traditional use for green screen imagine shopping at Ikea you are looking at a couch you want to see what it's going to look like in your home and you want to see if it's going to fit um you have an augmented reality capable device that uh especially on an iPhone 7 plus with two camera lenses um can sense depth and measure things and all that sort of stuff and now you can visualize it right in front of you on the screen you can see what it looks like you know I you know Ikea's all over that but Ikea has been into this thing kind of thing for years right the the whole Ikea catalog if you get the Ikea catalog whether it's the app or the printed booklet that they'll they'll mail you everything in there is a complete fiction right everything in the Ikea catalog is a lie because every part of the Ikea catalog is a digital creation not a photograph right the the plants the Furnishings the furniture the accessories pretty everything is digitally created and it's all models that they're placing in a 3D tool in the space in the room that they create and then rendering every part of it so going with AR kit is is one more step in this mission that are already on imagine um wanting to paint your walls and you could imagine you know you could visualize I don't want to imagine painted my walls thank you very much with with AR kit you could do that imagine that you were going on a a tour of a old city um you know you're going through New York and and you're in a place where something famous happened a long time ago and you could hold up your phone and and see it recreated in front of you and it overlays over the buildings and the streets change to you know dirt or been trying that one for a while we used to have the uh there was an AR style Wikipedia app where You' you'd hold up your phone and would overlay the Wikipedia photo on top of the existing reality that's we've been doing that for about 10 years but that it's always been junk and now with arkit it could actually be useful and simple for developers to create and that's where you're going to see the value in it what is it capable of it's capable of everything and nothing at the same time all right just because we we keep coming back to Pro users um we we have two things that were in this keynote that I think were for pro users right I would say the iMac Pro very clearly even though they said we all know this is not the Mac Pro but we think we can do an iMac that's for a pro user here's an iMac Pro uh how do you think the people that were at our Adorama event would receive that uh I mean I think it's expensive but if you compare it to if you were to want to build your your own um there's always this idea of oh I can you know make my own computer and it's so much cheaper the Hackintosh people tried to take the specs that uh were announced this thing and they could not compete with the price and then that doesn't even include the convenient uh all-in-one design uh the display I mean yeah uh people people are going to complain no matter what but uh I think that any pro user should be very happy with the announcement and the uh the external GPU kit the external GPU kit is really exciting to me and something that I want to embrace and I'm thinking about upgrading to a new Macbook Pro with USBC and Thunderbolt 3 just to take advantage of it there is one huge caveat that is bothersome for me the the landscape right now with the egpus is a little crazy as are the landscape for retina caliber displays external displays so if you want to use an egpu it does not work with the built-in screen on your MacBook Pro or your iMac you have to use a separate screen so um that kind of defeats the purpose of these gorgeous displays um and is kind of frustrating to me and if you want to use for example the ultra fine uh 4K or 5K displays um that are out right now you could not use those with these external gpus because there are no external gpus and no graphics cards that support USBC or Thunderbolt 3 and it seems like it would be certainly possible to have it redirect to the internal one uh unless there's some you lose bandd the way that it's hardwired um you lose about 20 to 30% of the capabilities for the people that have hacked it together on Apple's own website they just say simply that egpu support and High Sierra does not support the internal displays it only works external displays and so that's why when they demoed it at WWDC the external display was actually just a HTC uh Vive the um the VR set the VR headset so your second screen was just the VR headset didn't it but if you wanted to do it with a MacBook Pro or even an iMac you'd have to have a separate Monitor and if you want to get a retina caliber monitor with that level of uh pixel density uh the only ones that exist are the LG ultrafine displays and they don't support external gpus so you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place but I I think they were very calculated in that they they knew exactly who this was for you know they they've the complaints they've been getting have been saying we you know we want a Mac Pro that we could put different gpus into because we want to do VR right and that apple had abandoned people creating VR yeah so by saying here's your kit and all the way we're showing it with the uh the HTC 5 it's very clear that this is exactly for VR developer yeah VR um and then as the monitor situation gets better hopefully uh you know will and the support becomes official maybe for Gamers on Mac or even people that have a Mac but dual boot it with windows that want to play games that sort of stuff uh people that edit video for a living that just need more horsepower to crank stuff out uh 3D manipulation creation that sort of stuff there's all kinds of uses to have a a high-end graphics card when docked at home and then to have the portability of a Macbook on the go the one thing that's striking for me is is that there are some parts where Apple's vision is very clear and apparent when it comes to the iPad when it comes to what they're doing with mac and and now a little more so with where it comes to what they're doing for watch and care kit and health kit and it's a lot less clear for things like the car that we haven't really seen any evidence of other than we statements saying that they we know that they're doing it and that they know that they're doing self-driving and uh and and where homepod goes and what home kits meant to be doing you know they they Trot out all the people that support homekit but what's their what's their end game is still a little murky it's just a space that they want to be in and they don't want to see it get out of hand so the same reason that now you're going to be able to hack together your own homekit stuff you know they just don't want to lose ground in there they know that enthusiasts drive a lot of these platforms so there's there's things that are very core essential to their vision and their business and then there are things that are for lack of a better word hobbies and homekit is is you know they've put a placeholder there they've got people using it but it's still hobby for them they got to be in the space yeah I think that you have to have a foot in the door wearables are the same way definitely what story would you like to talk about that we haven't already been addressed oh I mean there was so much from WWDC but I mean I think that we've run the gamut here you know there's new hardware out um new Macbook uh we ran a review um you can check out the the 13-inch Macbook without touch bar uh we will be having in the coming days uh MacBook Pro reviews um uh with touch bar and we also had the 12-in MacBook review and then obviously we we talked about the iPad Pros the 10.5 and 12.9 those will be coming in the coming days as well so keep your eyes peeled for him all right uh I should mention that by the way I own in spirit of full disclosure I own some Apple stock and uh so take it with a grain of salt take it for what you will but this is I do not own shares and apple or any of the companies that I cover and on that bombshell this is episode 125 of the Apple Insider podcast and Neil where can people find you on the internet you can find my musings on appleinsider.com uh including a very article that said to only install iOS 11 beta 1 if you hate yourself um and you can yell at me about it and tell me I'm an idiot on Twitter at this is Neil Neil all right I'm Victor marks and thank you for joining us\n"