The Future of Apple Watch: A Series 6 Upgrade and iOS 13.5.1 Battery Drain Issues

I'm pretty sure I'll get the Series 6, I think they would just call it the Series 6 and I would buy it at this point. Um, hopefully they give us some nice features for it but yes, I expect to upgrade right um and and what are you uh planning to do with your series five at all? Those usually get uh sold off to a friend or pass along somewhere okay? Right? Do you use you obviously use it cuz it's there at the time? Are you uh conscious of and enjoying the always on stuff of the series five? It's had its moments um driving instead of having to jerk my wrist off the wheel and flip it around and try and wake up the face or touch it with my nose I can just look and see uh what's happening on the screen. It's much better.

I truly thought I was the only one who knows his his watch every now and again um I think I probably wish it was actually we shouldn't talk about that kind of thing okay yeah okay I remember being uh really impressed when Apple came out with that and it was the feature that made me want to trade in my four but it was the only feature that want made me want to do it so maybe I'll be tempted by the six as well um I mean I lasted on the original watch for a very long time so I maybe in that case I'm the opposite of you. I have the cheapest oldest Mac Mini, I have a 2015 iPad Pro, the screen of which is is so uh it's not broken or cracked but it's no longer responsive in a lot of places and I have uh an OD watch that I hang on to Forever plus.

I'm a mat guy you're an iPad guy I'm surprised we're even talking frankly in fact I'm tempted to slam the phone down except there is one last thing I would like your opinion about please because of what you know particularly about iOS this. I wrote a new story this week um based on the fact that there seem to be a number of users who are finding Apple music uh the app um when they're running iOS 13.5.1 Apple music app is draining their battery noticeably and not only noticeably while they're playing it even if they don't have an apple music subscription and are not playing anything through it they are seeing heavy usage and a noticeable drop in battery life.

I I am a heavy Apple music subscriber for it, I've had nothing of this at all uh and fact I don't think anyone on Apple Insider has so I can't work out what's causing it but do you have any idea why one app could be affecting some people and not others? It's hard to say probably just a bug in background task management anything like that goes wrong and it could just suck down the battery life. But I'm sure an update will uh fix that issue because I mean it's not happening over on iOS 14 as far as I can tell so oh that's a good point.

I forgot about that yes and actually wouldn't you normally expect battery problems uh on beta cuz I think batteries the last thing they will figure out isn't it? Yes, the battery life seems to be the last thing they optimize for. Uh as older devices and batteries the the the final thing at the gate as they release it to everybody all right well I mean you can see that is they want to make it work first then they want to make it work better that makes sense but weirdly just as a last thought in my head uh before we finish tonight I it just suddenly occurs to me that come September or October whenever it is that we get the new iPhones and the new watch um aren't you you're not going to have as much fun as anybody else cuz you already have played with the software extensively for months.

Are you going to be let down by the new releases well, the summertime betas let me play with everything Apple's done but then the uh official release lets me play with everything the third party people are going to be doing so I'll have a whole another round of fun coming to me once this releases oh that is a perfect answer thank you very much for that can't top that no more calls we have a winner I so looking forward to omn focus as a widget on iOS 14 let's just put that out there but um well where can people find you when they need to.

Well, I'm Hilly Tech on Twitter, you'll find a link in the show notes okay and I'm W Gallagher, and as of next week it's back to Steven Roes, he'll come in and apologize for all the damage we've done over the last two weeks but hopefully also tell us how he has had a proper holiday away from screens and I'll be listening in to see what he says about that.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome to the Apple Insider podcast I'm William Gallagher and for one more week I'm still stepping in for uh Steven roblas who's off on holiday and hopefully having a very good time because we haven't actually heard from him we'll get worried next week if he doesn't come back in the meantime as well as actually this week we have an amazing amount of news to cover but I also want to exploit this little chance I've got to speak to somebody really interesting about Apple gear and in this case it's somebody who uses Apple gear in a way I cannot comprehend we'll see who persuades who later on it's going to be W helard from Apple Insider W welcome to the show hello William how you doing I'm Grand thanks I I was just thinking uh we we both work an apple insid this is the Apple inside a podcast we must have corresponded and talked and we've worked on an articles together this is actually the first time I've got to be able to sit down and have a n with you so I'm looking forward to that very much but let's deal with news I honestly thought it would be quiet this week I was very pleased to get this I thought we'll have a chat but there's so much stuff going on including stuff that I think you will know far more than I do um is to do with Hardware Apple silicon and this thing that this uh there will be Thunderbolt support there won't be Thunderbolt support there will or there won't be external gpus and things do you know what the the latest statement let's take Thunderbolt first are we losing Thunderbolt forever it doesn't look like it um at first uh it was questionable because Apple was shipping their developer transition kits without Thunderbolt support but that's luckily because they're using the iPad a12z bionic chips for those but um recently in in has announced their Thunderbolt 4 specs uh in Earnest just to reiterate it's basically Thunderbolt 3 but you can use longer cables um Apple kind of shoehorned in on that uh announcement and said that they're proud to use uh Intel Thunderbolt and that they've helped develop it this whole time and you can expect it to continue to work on future Max okay well that seems pretty definitive that I just this going to sound so silly I'm to say to you but it always used to be whenever I heard the phrase Thunderbolt 3 I thought of Jerry Anderson and Thunderbirds and the red rocket that goes out and now we've moved on I'm thinking of Thunderbird 4 which is the little yellow submarine and you're just looking at me like this is an English thing you've never heard of back away um is Thunderbolt 4 actually useful it sounds like they're just bunging a number on because they can if the only difference is the cable's a bit longer yes uh I'm not not completely familiar with the spec but originally the uh transfer speed was so high I think 40 gbes per second that you'd need extremely short cables less than one meter long to uh achieve the full speed but now you can get uh a little bit more length in there for better setups and they also introduced and I think everyone's going to be happy about this uh multi-port um Hub support so you can have up to four ports I believe on a hub for USBC now Thunderbolt well I I realize I have a hub plugged into my Mac Mini and it's got USB a c probably all of the letters there but I didn't appreciate that there was a thunderbolt problem so previously you were stuck with one cable between one thing basically um they couldn't uh split up a port simultaneously between uh data and power I think that was the issue again don't um quote me on this too much but um the problem with that was uh you could only have actual hubs with maybe two Thunder uh Thunderbolt ports um or full spec Thunderbolt ports whereas uh now you should be able to have more does that mean uh I'm just trying to predict predict what I'm going to be doing in in the future is that going to make Thunderbolt a four sorry I need said three again Thunderbolt four is that going to make Thunderbolt more universally accepted it seems that it's probably going to be the same kind of uh use cases as we have now um Apple Hardware uh Pro Hardware is probably going to be using it as per usual uh USB 4 is on its way as well so that's going to bring basically Thunderbolt 3 capabilities to the USB spec and I I would say that's going to be much more universally adopted so you can see faster speeds on most of your devices um without having to have the Thunderbolt spec this is more professionally targeted ah when you say professionally targeted I think expensive um do we know anything about is Apple going to do its usual thing of charging an incredible amount of money for a cable that's an inch longer than the last one I'm sure yes they've got to make their money somehow haven't they the poor little lambs uh I'm going off the track here let me get back to that thing that really struck me as quite shocking um the external gpus I I genuinely had not heard of them until Mike Worley on app inide infused me them and he has convinced me completely that they are a great thing but it there's this story I'm hearing that Apple thinks not so much and is going to get rid of them am I misunderstanding again I've looked into this a little bit and it appears the documentation for um Apple silicon is stating that Apple believes their internal gpus for their chips are going to be very good and not to underestimate them um they haven't specifically said anything about external GPU support but it does leave uh the question in the air of uh how much Apple wants to rely on their own gpus and um maybe not others so it's uh it's an emission so far rather than them coming out and saying uh forget it we're not supporting any of you they just haven't said that they are yet is that fair that's fair to say um looking at the information we have now it's uh basically uh avoiding the topic again as almost as if Apple avoided the Thunderbolt topic originally they basically didn't mention anything about it until Intel uh made this announcement so maybe once uh their third party partners are ready to talk about it Apple will have something to say likely they want to get everything um done under the you know under the cover and make sure everything's done before they actually make a official announcement that makes sense that's cautious I like it when Apple just comes out with and it's ready today and things like that rather than the lots of I mean we've got them at the moment saying uh the 2-year road map for Apple silicon but normally they're a bit better than that so yeah can't fault them for wanting to get it right first oh but actually I just suddenly remember um when Apple first started supporting uh egpus uh some people were surprised that they've done it and I'm not I'm not sure of the situation for that um do you remember what was going on and were you surprised as well this uh actually is something completely outside of my wheelhouse I don't pay a whole lot of attention to this um not really working from anything uh heavily Mac related so external GPU support is a pretty big deal but just something that doesn't affect me so I haven't looked too much into it J know I completely forgot that is actually the this is I'm I'm obviously building up to something here the thing we disagree about and this is related to it so I can't ask you anything more we'll skip that I'll just say fingers crossed for egpus but I like the idea that we don't need them because Apple stuff is going to be so good that'll be all right I like that I actually spent a while considering um a 13-inch MacBook Pro versus a 16-in Mac Pro for a video editing whole series of projects I've got to do and I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion I'd have to buy a 16-in one because it has a separate GPU inside it I know it's not the same as an external GPU but it's separated Graphics processing unit and I was very reluctant about it because I think the 16in one is gigantic it's like this boat you're carrying around uh the idea that uh Apple silicon will make it will make the smaller one faster I might be making that up but I'm holding on to that hope if we get it though at some point it's going to go wrong and we're going to have to take it in for for repairs and something changed about this week that I know you wrote about an apple Insider you know all about um I forgot what it's called there's like a a a repair program what's going on the independent repair provider program that's the one um so what difference does it make where can I go so originally um Apple would allow authorized service providers only uh to service your Apple devices so you'd have to go to um something like the Apple store or uh more recently Best Buy to get your stuff repaired um that only added about a th000 stores uh to the repair program so while the selection grew it only grew a slight bit then Apple announced their independent repair program allowing you know not so big retailers to apply so your third party repair providers uh will be able to oper out of their own stores they have to apply through Apple proving that they're um an actual business and certified and everything and they go through the same process and training as authorized service providers getting the same documentation and help for free um once that's done they can actually service your products Apple added about 700 um of those stores to the US recently uh through if I remember about 120 uh new providers and they've actually expanded this project outside of the US to 32 more countries that all sounds that all sounds great in fact um that bit there where you said that they get the the the training materials and things for free I was wondering if this is Apple uh officially saying there's this opportunity for all these repair people but actually the process of getting on it uh if not charges to Apple then the the time and the cost was actually so much that businesses wouldn't take it on and apple could carry on Happily using its Apple Stores am I being really cynical and actually apple is doing a great thing here it's uh somewhere in between because if you examine this it the elephants in the room it's very obvious Apple wants to avoid the uh continuous L litigation on their right to repair uh movements going on throughout the United States and other countries um not being able to repair your device at home or have access to Parts uh makes people very angry um obviously if you own something you might want to repair it yourself especially if you have the knowhow to do so but apple does not believe that to be the case they should that they should be the ones fixing your very expensive devices so both sides um have significant arguments but at the end of the day apple is just trying to avoid um getting sued basically because you think they'd be bored if it's a day of the week and they haven't had a new lawsuit they'd be twitching but okay that makes sense you you actually remind me of um you know of because you write a about this on Apple as well the opening and closing of Apple Stores uh when the first stores in here in the UK were reopened um somebody was telling me uh they were there were film Crews outside one of the London stores and there was this massive queue going in and here the the response was really seriously for an Apple store for Supermarket a pharmacy yes but if you need apples you could buy it online why in the world would you be queuing around the block in London for this and they interviewed people on it and apparently the giant majority of people in the line were waiting to get things repaired so that was um eye opening actually just how much repair demand there is here in the UK it's not that the UK people are just rougher with their apple gear is it well if you uh are listening to this podcast there's chances you listen to other podcasters and um I happen to spend a lot of time doing so myself and many of them have the same um quandry here of oh no what happens if my very expensive iPhone Mac or God forbid Mac Pro decides to um die today and I need to take it to get it serviced where do I go well all these stores being closed what do you do are you just going to be without a production machine or you going to mail it off and wait a few months cross your fingers it's not exactly an ideal situation no that's a good point I used to have this habit that I would keep my last Mac around in case something went wrong but actually my last Mac died on its feet um so I had to move to a new machine and I have no backup which is partly why I've got a certain problem that we might talk about later today uh however Apple Stores um it's yes another reason why I want to talk to you about it because you're the one on Apple Insider that's keeping track of of this this madness of closing opening closing opening and things I mean Madness is the wrong word I just mean there's so much churn over it uh and things what's the the latest with stores reopening and reclosing how how we fixed across the states or across the world well it's actually going pretty well if you look at the World At Large um Apple has over 500 stores and they've opened almost uh all of them I think there's only about a 100 or so still closed and that's mostly in the US um we see these uh opening and closings happening over and over again in the United States because of how our government and how uh we we as a people are handling the whole Corona virus lockdown and these spikes and apple is doing their best to be reactionary well actually let me correct that preventative versus reactionary because they don't want these spikes to um H happen while in towns where these stores are open and then Apple you know be responsible for someone getting this virus they're they're doing everything they can to keep up with this so in States like Florida Texas Arizona California where we've seen massive uh spikes these last few weeks um they've begun closing stores again and it's you know 2 three five up to 50 stores now like it it happens very quickly I realized actually I don't know where where you based do you have a local Apple Store and are you able to go to it do you go to it well funny enough I'm in the middle of a move I was previously in Virginia Beach there was two stores right there near me uh one actually right across the street and but now I've moved to Tennessee where I'm about an hour and a half away from the nearest Apple store how could you leave somewhere called Virginia beach sounds great mind you Tennessee sounds pretty good as well okay uh I'm actually to two uh Apple Stores but I can't go near them my my wife is um on the sort of vulnerable list and advice here in the UK from the government is so contradictory I mean practically minute to minute the the population here we're just kind of ignoring the government and trying to make up our own mind over what we feel safe about and at the moment our applesauce are right in the middle of uh Birmingham city center Sol Hall City Center big uh arrangements and I would I want to go in and check out some things but I just can't it's going to be at least a month before I'm near any of them so it's going to feel weird walking into an Apple Store um by then I might have saved up enough money to buy something there though so you know when Virginia Beach reopened we me and my friend visited one of the stores just to get an idea of what was happening with the checkup process and everything and uh my friend upgraded their iPhone and we went through that whole thing with an Apple employee and it was just very very strange environment to see a totally empty Apple Store in the middle of the day with employees walking around with masks constantly scrubbing down surfaces and it was it was definitely very weird to be there I remember talking to an Apple Store uh employee about a month before lockdown just in the store waiting for something to about how they do things and they were already telling me that they they clean everything uh twice a day and that particular wipes for because of all the shared keyboards and stuff so they were already doing that stuff and now yeah apart from the cleaning and The Masks it sounds like you could have been in a Microsoft store that was harsh I don't think anyone's ever been in a Microsoft store to be honest I've been by one I was somewhere in California and I saw one right next to an Apple store and I was quite yeah poor old Microsoft closing their stores this episode is brought to you by masterclass masterclass is an incredible learning platform that all online and you can get masterclass apps on all your devices when you use masterclass you can learn about a wide variety of topics from experts in their field you can learn about science and scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn about the art of negotiation from Chris Voss you can learn about humor and writing from David Sedaris and so 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drive in the car I can do that on my iPhone I can switch from audio to video with just the tap of a button individual lessons are approximately 10 to 15 minutes in length and so it can be great to fit in the time you have like on a lunch break and whatever you're interested in whether it's makeup and beauty or humor and writing or cooking there is a master class for you I highly recommend you check it out get unlimited access to every master class and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off the annual all access pass and you're going to want to take more than one class and so when you get that all access pass you can watch any of the master classes whenever you want go to masterclass.com slapple Insider that's masterclass.com slapple Insider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode um I don't want to get too specific about things I want to buy but there is one thing that came out this week that I think maybe the two of us might be interested in uh Logitech has released new uh I was going to say apple brand G but that's not the right word um Apple specific gear they've redone their old k380 uh keyboard and made it Apple specific I honestly thought it was I used to have one to like loan it to a friend but apparently the new version has uh an apple key instead of a Windows key things are in the right way around the correct order and they're in new colors I so fancy a new keyboard for my Mac do you fancy a new keyboard for your iPad or are you sorted out well actually I recently purchased a mechanical keyboard for my desk setup um got one of those Kyron k2s and I'm loving it so far definitely miss it not being at my desk right now but it's a very nice keyboard I don't think I'll be upgrading anything anytime soon so wait that's a that's a full mechanical makes a lot of clacky noises and lights up sort of keyboard yeah red switches for anyone who's curious I was going to ask at okay so so you're a clacky kind of typer are you not too loud I don't want it to be booming through the house but yes it's not bad well I I actually learned to type on a manual typewriter so I'm used to a a raw as I start doing typing with things so for me quite little keyboards they I feel like I'm not working they're not making a noise but it's better for my fingers to use the Apple magic keyboard and things I'm just intrigued by the fact that you like uh heavy sounding keyboards but you're a strong iPad User so I'd have thought you know the light touch on the screen that you'd like that somewhere else but no you like that combination being able to switch back and forth is nice it's a more of a context thing you know I'm at my desk I'm at work the heavy duty keyboard you know or I'm lounging on the couch with my magic keyboard with a very mushy feeling and a compact design so it's very very good on my brain to be able to distinguish between the two environments all right I tell you what we do have more news we've got to cover more news but I can't wait this wait any longer would you like to explain what our big difference in apple gear is or shall I well go ahead the difference is I'm right and you're wrong there you go it's easy I would say a fair description is I am a as much as I love my iPad Pro my 2015 iPad Pro utterly adore it I am a heavy Mac User and you aren't any kind of Mac user at all is that true well to be fair I have a Mac Mini but it's more of a refrigerator than a Mac I keep it for Server use it does all those little Automatic download things and I keep my iTunes library locally but that's about all it's for I don't really touch it well but hang on that mean like all of us you can't survive without a Mac that's what I'm taking away from that oh absolutely yeah I don't think I can use my iPad as a server anytime soon true what I was wondering was whether or not you were it was a case that you were very Pro iPads or in some way anti- Macs uh which is it it's a tough question obviously I'm not anti-mac it's just something about the iPad form factor the software just how everything mashes together just uh clicks for me it it works I like being able to shift it from one device to another whether it be a tablet or a laptop or a desktop with a monitor you know it's that kind of system and no Mac can really touch that even though a Mac is more versatile in software and it can let you do things like xcode and side load uh software but those are just things I don't need in my daily life so the iPad covers all the bases I didn't see any reason to uh do otherwise did you um come to this conclusion and then buy the iPad or or is this kind of Taken time to go this way I was on this show a few weeks ago I can't remember the exact number I think 280 something uh 287 but I discussed this a little bit it was a it was a gradual change over time I actually switched from Android back in the day um Windows Android very heavy user if you knew me in 2014 I was praising the Google Gods um but the uh biggest difference here is it's just um over time I grew tired of the constant uh barrage of updates needed drivers needed please disconnect your hard drive before uh or unmount it before disconnecting it and just all the little tweaks and things that come along with using a desktop class computer it's just feels older even though you can buy the newest hardware and it zips along something about that system felt um a little old but Apple every time they update something with the iPad it just started catching my eye as wow this looks like it's going somewhere uh it's growing into quite the platform and I bought one and used it for a while alongside a Macbook and I just felt like I was using the iPad more and more and eventually I realized there was nothing I couldn't accomplish on the iPad that I was doing on the Mac so I just kind of did uh what Federico vtii did over at Mac stories and kind of followed his lead and started using the iPad as a daily driver do I okay he just said there's nothing you couldn't do with it I mean you did say about the server earlier but I get it in in all your all your day-to-day work or your day-to-day yeah your personal life and things but is that completely without compromise is there nothing you had to give up or change to make it work obviously there's going to be some uh weirdness some things um when I first uh completely ditched the Mac that was about if I remember correctly 2017 um there were obvious things you couldn't use a mouse uh properly or you couldn't connect external storage there's a lot of comprise to be made and luckily Apple has been addressing those things over time but even now there's still things that just don't work quite right um or weird limitations Apple has on their software that really shouldn't be there uh for instance the photos app on the iPad you can label faces you know you grab a little circle and label your faces manually on the Mac on the iPad you cannot do that so if the photos app doesn't recognize a face there's no hope for you you can't label it you have to go to a Mac and do it or another strange instance just carried over from iOS software of contacts app not letting you manage your groups you have to have a thirdparty app like card hop in order to manage your groups in contacts you can't do it on iOS or iPad OS it's a crazy Omission doesn't make sense I didn't know that I mean I use cop because I like cop I didn't appreciate that difference okay good old card hop then we should put a link to card hop in the notes just in case anybody hasn't heard it um I don't I think my difference here it comes down to the fact that I don't use these features I don't use face recognition but mostly because about 12 years ago now I was working on uh radio times it's like the UK cant of uh TV guide and I I had some job that was to do with the covers the covers of this magazine they're very famous there's parties about there books about them I wrote a book about them but um I had to collect them all and for some reason they ended up in photos and now every time I go into face identification it has uh like David tenant's face from Doctor Who on there none of my relatives or friends or me just countless people from BBC shows and things like that so it's become kind of worthless and I don't know how to undo all of that okay how many oh sorry a lot of my computer usage before joining Apple Insider was focused around casual use like anyone else or uh photography I really enjoyed going out and taking photos or doing photo shoots for my friends and um so yeah some of that definitely stems from uh wanting to have better like Photo features and whatnot there's other those are very obvious very Apple specific issues the bigger picture issues being um I mentioned before Google Apps uh that we use Google Docs for work and their apps are just not optimized their websites do not work on iPad the way you want them to you have to fight them every step of the way to get anything done in those apps on an iPad I I really admire Google's software and the features of it but admiration is different to using I found them all really ugly uh Mac or iPad so I just don't tend to go for them but I think I'm missing out there's lots of stuff I I wish I could do with Apple Mail For example that I know you can in Gmail so one day they'll all talk together nicely won't they no no no okay oh what I tell you this is getting a bit esoteric maybe but um uh when I use iOS uh a lot and we'll confess in the moment that we are using it right now I use shortcuts a huge amount but then on my Mac I have keyboard Maestro at Hazel all these things uh do you use much automation well all that there really is on iPad is um shortcuts I do use that for work and I have uh several personal shortcuts that I use uh we discussed that on the uh the same episode I mentioned before we had a little shortcuts talk but um just to reiterate uh just like the iTunes movies deals post I make every week um I generate that using a shortcut pretty much 90% of the data I enter comes from that shortcut and then I have to go in and manually edit a few things or I use um outside of that I use keyboard shortcuts so I don't have keyboard Myro and I can't execute commands from there but I can at least have pre filled out text that I can quickly type which helps out quite a lot when uh writing in links and whatnot for our pages I use uh text expender for some of that and and it is available on Mac iPad Android iOS exra sketch everywhere and things like that uh but you tend to do it through shortcuts or something like that something built the the keyboard um settings in iOS you can actually create your own custom keyboard shortcuts so like you type out a word or a phrase and it'll expand into a full phrase it's a very rudimentary version of what Texas expander offers but it works for me this episode is brought to you by expressvpn you ever notice that when you search for something online all of a 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expressvpn is running I leave it on on my Mac my iPad or my iPhone and it runs in the background that's how easy it is to use you tap one button and you're protected an expressvpn is available on all your devices phones computers tablets even your smart TV there's no excuse why you can't be using it so protect your online activity today with the VPN rated number one by CNET and wired visit our exclusive link expressvpn.com slapple Insider and you can get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package that's expressvpn.com slapple Insider expressvpn.com slapple Insider to learn more uh if you're an iOS user heavy iPad User are you willing or able or tempted to run the beta versions of iOS 14 iPad OS 14 or what well for me I'm a crazy person and I don't advise anyone do this but I am running iPad OS on my primary iPad Pro and Os 14 on my iPhone I have the Mac beta installed everything has it except for one little thing I have this iPad minu over here on iPad OS 13 just in case everything crashes and burns I can still work from there uh to the worry of my lead editor at least you do it on the I mean please seriously nobody should do this um I speak from experien I have burnt uh I burnt an iPhone some years ago about could get it to work ever no somebody fixed it for me in the end but took weeks um if you're on a Mac at least you could Bo boot from an external drive and and have it working and things if your iPad goes it's isn't it just murderously difficult to step back or undo a beza it's a process but it actually isn't as catastrophic as some people make it seem the key here is to have a backup from the iPad OS 13 version so that way you can easily do a factory restore andall inst that but the problem is is uh sometimes you encounter some errors you might need a Mac with the new version of xcode to get everything reset properly so it can definitely turn into a real headache if you don't know exactly what you're doing well I have a problem my Mac Mini I bought 2018 I love my Mac Mini but I got it with the smallest amount of SSD space available that's what I could afford I do not have enough room to install xcode on it to fix a problem like this so I I have put iOS 14 on a spish iPhone but I'm not putting anything else on anything except I got to admit I am a little tempted because it seems to me that this beta cycle is already more stable than I think it was last year is am I just lucky or does it seem stable to you well I have the curse of always having the latest and greatest and I I believe Apple optimizes specifically for those devices um from people who have older devices like uh Mike worthley and uh I think Andrew um O'Hara our video guy both have installed these betas on iPhone 10r 10s era devices and those are almost 2 years old now and they are struggling with a lot of basic features or getting random boot Loops so not everyone is having the perfect jolly time with uh iOS 14 oh that's worrying I was genuinely considered when B the SEC the second beta dropped this week I seriously considered putting it on my main iPhone but I'm going to be sensible and I thank you for this I think I you you're obviously much more familiar with beat software than I am I am you can hear it in me I'm afraid as much as I want to use it I'm a little afraid of losing access to machines that I I rely on so much but on this spare is iPhone I've now put two beaters of iOS 14 the first and the second and in both cases I noticed features I know were there weren't uh for at least a couple hours you know the um the app library and the first version of beta I ran it installed it everything's working there was no app library and then a little while later there was but it only showed me uh recently downloaded apps and then the next morning when I picked it up it's all there and working and then with beta 2 I pulled it in and I wanted to see what was new about widgets and you know when you edit the home screen you now get a plus button and the top corner you can add widgets I didn't there was no plus button but about an hour later when I picked it up to try something else uh there it was how can it be that beaters aren't they take a while to work is that unfathomable to you it uh doesn't make a lot of sense to me how some of these Things Fall Apart it sometimes these things break very uniquely so the it's just the way Apple connects all of their software and Hardware because everything being so tightly knit you never want to under look under that hood it' probably just be a Chasm of snakes it's it's Insanity so I it's probably one of those things where you're updating the device and everything is trying to catch up um those first few hours of any beta or new install uh your phone is just burning the battery away trying to process all the new information so that might be what you're running into that makes more sense when you say it that way it reminds me of things like um uh Spotlight on a Mac uh used to take a while to kind of get its act together and index everything and stuff before it would actually work I seem to remember that being quite a slow process and that makes sense as well a lot of data to handle for it I realized actually I tried to dodge something earlier when we were talking firstly about your being an iPad uh only user chiefly and then about the fact that you're a beta user I feel we should probably come honest become come clean now about what's going on at this very moment you are on a beta set of everything I am on a Mac that's properly on Mac OS Catalina everything up to date nothing going wrong with it at all except everything's gone wrong with it at all I lost the use of my Mac and the whole internet connection and everything a minute and a half before we were supposed to speak so this entire episode is in fact iOS based um did you do this to me to win the point oh yeah I sent the gremlin specifically to your house thanks okay I mean you see I know you know your stuff I blame you for this it's unfathomable to me that my entire internet connection has gone down and yet my iPhone is working on that same internet connection for it this is this is not technology anymore this is alchemy and we should have the Alchemy inside of podcast and incant incantations and it's about I'm just you got to stop me now I'm going off on WR very frustrating I think it's fantastically um revealing of how dependent we be come on our devices the moment we lose them I I have been working for about 8 hours 10 hours today writing different bits deeply absorbed in the work and then suddenly it was all taken away from me and it's like losing you know chopped off at your arms kind of thing by this it's probably not healthy to be this dependent and do you are you good at switching off machines and walking away generally speaking uh not too much I spend a lot of my time at work obviously working from these things and when I get off it uh basically switches to some other app or thing I'm doing um yes um I mean you shouldn't be like that you should get out there I mean particularly in Tennessee of all the places you should enjoy your local environment but I'm relieved because I'm the same um one thing I utterly loved that I have not yet found for myself on um iOS 14 because I'm not running it on my actual iPhone is this thing that you you can change your watch face you using a shortcut so you can have your watch face change from your work hours to your ledure time hours exactly at whatever time you're expected to finish I really fancy that have you been mucking around with anything like that cuz you are a shortcut user are you delving into that yet I haven't uh quite had time obviously in the middle of a big move but um it's definitely intriguing to me I have the beta on my watch because again I'm a crazy person but I definitely want to set up the watch faces changing throughout the day that's a really cool idea I already have watch faces for you know bedtime or daytime or exercise so just having those go off with certain automations would definitely uh be useful wait what exercise yeah let's not go into that no no no that's fine that's cool but I'm sorry you have the beta of watchos 7 you have all of your devices bu that one solitary iPad Mini are fully dependent on beat so for you are a bad example to the world but is it fun are you enjoying it they're very very fun yes uh no no problems here no boot Loops actually it's uh very impressive the one thing I heard about boot Loops is somebody was saying um actually it's Rosy Orchard on the automated podcast I think she was a great podcast she was saying that she washed her hands and uh that feature kicked in did what it was supposed to do but then kept looping and rebooted her watch other than that I think she said she was having no problems are you finding is the watch as steady as everything else at the moment yes uh no noticeable changes I use it for sleep tracking I totally uninstalled all my other sleep tracking apps and I've been using Apple's bedtime feature sleep tracking and all that and uh no issues and no battery life problems funny enough it just lasts the whole night and the whole day the next day without too much issue really that's very impressive okay I mean I I I was amused during uh the keynote speech I remember quite how they phrased it but they tried to make a virtue out of the fact that you know you could if you want to put your phone your watch on charge in the morning after you've slept and I read that as we're going to cream your battery you're going to be struggling but even in the beta you're saying not so much yeah if I had woke up this morning and went for a run uh I'd probably be much worse off forwar but right now I'm at about 54% and that's since I wore the watch probably about 8:00 p.m. last night at a 100% charge so I'm doing pretty good so far W I'm on 69% and it's been uh 12 hours that my thing has been on since charging okay that's what uh what version of the watch have you got uh the sorry the series 5 uh the bigger one oh right I've got the bigger series 4 things I forgot you said you are on the latest and greatest does that mean uh I don't know is that just a fluke of where you are now or are you going to switch over to the Series 6 when that comes out I'm pretty sure I'll get the Series 6 um I think they would they could just call it the Series 6 and I would buy it at this point but um hopefully they give us some nice features for it but yes I expect to upgrade right um and and what are you uh planning to do with your series five at all those usually get uh sold off to a friend or pass along somewhere okay right do you use you obviously use it cuz it's there at the time are are you uh conscious of and enjoying the always on stuff of the series five it's had its moments uh driving instead of having to jerk my wrist off the wheel and flip it around and try and wake up the face or touch it with my nose I can just look and see uh what's happening on the screen it's much better I truly thought I was the only one who knows his his watch every now and again um I think I probably wish it was actually we shouldn't talk about that kind of thing okay yeah okay I remember being uh really impressed when Apple came out with that and it was the feature that made me want to trade in my four but it was the only feature that want made me want to do it so maybe I'll be tempted by the six as well uh I mean I lasted on the original watch for a very long time so I maybe in that case I'm the opposite of you I have the cheapest oldest Mac Mini I have a 2015 iPad Pro the screen of which is is so uh it's not broken or cracked but it's no longer responsive in a lot of places and I have uh an OD watch that I hang on to Forever plus I'm a mat guy you're an iPad guy I'm surprised we're even talking frankly in fact I'm tempted to slam the phone down except there is one last thing I would like your opinion about please because of what you know particularly about iOS this I wrote a new story this week um based on the fact that there seem to be a number of users who are finding Apple music uh the app um when they're running iOS 13.5.1 Apple music app is draining their battery noticeably and not only noticeably while they're playing it even if they don't have an apple music subscription and are not playing anything through it they are seeing heavy usage and a noticeable drop in battery life I I am a heavy Apple music is I am a subscriber for it I've had nothing of this at all uh and fact I don't think anyone on Apple Insider has so I can't work out what's causing it but do you have any idea why one app could be affecting some people and not others it's hard to say Pro probably just a bug in background task management anything like that goes wrong and it could just suck down the battery life but I'm sure an update will uh fix that issue because I mean it's not happening over on iOS 14 as far as I can tell so oh that's a good point I forgot about that yes and actually wouldn't you normally expect battery problems uh on beta cuz I think batteries the last thing they will figure out isn't it yes the battery life seems to be the last thing they optimize for uh as older devices and batteries the the the final thing at the gate as they release it to everybody all right well I mean you can see that is they want to make it work first then they want to make it work better that makes sense but weirdly just as a last thought in my head uh before we finish tonight I it just suddenly occurs to me that come September or October whenever it is that we get the new iPhones and the new watch um aren't you you're not going to have as much fun as anybody else cuz you already have played with the software extensively for months are you going to be let down by the new releases well the summertime betas let me play with everything Apple's done but then the uh official release lets me play with everything the third party people are going to be doing so I'll have a whole another round of fun coming to me once this releases oh that is a perfect answer thank you very much for that can't top that no more calls we have a winner I so looking forward to omn focus as a widget on iOS 14 let's just put that out there but um well where can people find you when they need to well I'm hilly tech on Twitter you'll find a link in the show notes okay and I'm W Gallagher and as of next week it's back to Steven roers he'll come in and apologize for all the damage we've done over the last two weeks but hopefully also tell us how he has had a proper holiday away from screens and I'll be listening in to see what he says about that thanks w really good to talk to you at last and thanks everybody for listeninghello welcome to the Apple Insider podcast I'm William Gallagher and for one more week I'm still stepping in for uh Steven roblas who's off on holiday and hopefully having a very good time because we haven't actually heard from him we'll get worried next week if he doesn't come back in the meantime as well as actually this week we have an amazing amount of news to cover but I also want to exploit this little chance I've got to speak to somebody really interesting about Apple gear and in this case it's somebody who uses Apple gear in a way I cannot comprehend we'll see who persuades who later on it's going to be W helard from Apple Insider W welcome to the show hello William how you doing I'm Grand thanks I I was just thinking uh we we both work an apple insid this is the Apple inside a podcast we must have corresponded and talked and we've worked on an articles together this is actually the first time I've got to be able to sit down and have a n with you so I'm looking forward to that very much but let's deal with news I honestly thought it would be quiet this week I was very pleased to get this I thought we'll have a chat but there's so much stuff going on including stuff that I think you will know far more than I do um is to do with Hardware Apple silicon and this thing that this uh there will be Thunderbolt support there won't be Thunderbolt support there will or there won't be external gpus and things do you know what the the latest statement let's take Thunderbolt first are we losing Thunderbolt forever it doesn't look like it um at first uh it was questionable because Apple was shipping their developer transition kits without Thunderbolt support but that's luckily because they're using the iPad a12z bionic chips for those but um recently in in has announced their Thunderbolt 4 specs uh in Earnest just to reiterate it's basically Thunderbolt 3 but you can use longer cables um Apple kind of shoehorned in on that uh announcement and said that they're proud to use uh Intel Thunderbolt and that they've helped develop it this whole time and you can expect it to continue to work on future Max okay well that seems pretty definitive that I just this going to sound so silly I'm to say to you but it always used to be whenever I heard the phrase Thunderbolt 3 I thought of Jerry Anderson and Thunderbirds and the red rocket that goes out and now we've moved on I'm thinking of Thunderbird 4 which is the little yellow submarine and you're just looking at me like this is an English thing you've never heard of back away um is Thunderbolt 4 actually useful it sounds like they're just bunging a number on because they can if the only difference is the cable's a bit longer yes uh I'm not not completely familiar with the spec but originally the uh transfer speed was so high I think 40 gbes per second that you'd need extremely short cables less than one meter long to uh achieve the full speed but now you can get uh a little bit more length in there for better setups and they also introduced and I think everyone's going to be happy about this uh multi-port um Hub support so you can have up to four ports I believe on a hub for USBC now Thunderbolt well I I realize I have a hub plugged into my Mac Mini and it's got USB a c probably all of the letters there but I didn't appreciate that there was a thunderbolt problem so previously you were stuck with one cable between one thing basically um they couldn't uh split up a port simultaneously between uh data and power I think that was the issue again don't um quote me on this too much but um the problem with that was uh you could only have actual hubs with maybe two Thunder uh Thunderbolt ports um or full spec Thunderbolt ports whereas uh now you should be able to have more does that mean uh I'm just trying to predict predict what I'm going to be doing in in the future is that going to make Thunderbolt a four sorry I need said three again Thunderbolt four is that going to make Thunderbolt more universally accepted it seems that it's probably going to be the same kind of uh use cases as we have now um Apple Hardware uh Pro Hardware is probably going to be using it as per usual uh USB 4 is on its way as well so that's going to bring basically Thunderbolt 3 capabilities to the USB spec and I I would say that's going to be much more universally adopted so you can see faster speeds on most of your devices um without having to have the Thunderbolt spec this is more professionally targeted ah when you say professionally targeted I think expensive um do we know anything about is Apple going to do its usual thing of charging an incredible amount of money for a cable that's an inch longer than the last one I'm sure yes they've got to make their money somehow haven't they the poor little lambs uh I'm going off the track here let me get back to that thing that really struck me as quite shocking um the external gpus I I genuinely had not heard of them until Mike Worley on app inide infused me them and he has convinced me completely that they are a great thing but it there's this story I'm hearing that Apple thinks not so much and is going to get rid of them am I misunderstanding again I've looked into this a little bit and it appears the documentation for um Apple silicon is stating that Apple believes their internal gpus for their chips are going to be very good and not to underestimate them um they haven't specifically said anything about external GPU support but it does leave uh the question in the air of uh how much Apple wants to rely on their own gpus and um maybe not others so it's uh it's an emission so far rather than them coming out and saying uh forget it we're not supporting any of you they just haven't said that they are yet is that fair that's fair to say um looking at the information we have now it's uh basically uh avoiding the topic again as almost as if Apple avoided the Thunderbolt topic originally they basically didn't mention anything about it until Intel uh made this announcement so maybe once uh their third party partners are ready to talk about it Apple will have something to say likely they want to get everything um done under the you know under the cover and make sure everything's done before they actually make a official announcement that makes sense that's cautious I like it when Apple just comes out with and it's ready today and things like that rather than the lots of I mean we've got them at the moment saying uh the 2-year road map for Apple silicon but normally they're a bit better than that so yeah can't fault them for wanting to get it right first oh but actually I just suddenly remember um when Apple first started supporting uh egpus uh some people were surprised that they've done it and I'm not I'm not sure of the situation for that um do you remember what was going on and were you surprised as well this uh actually is something completely outside of my wheelhouse I don't pay a whole lot of attention to this um not really working from anything uh heavily Mac related so external GPU support is a pretty big deal but just something that doesn't affect me so I haven't looked too much into it J know I completely forgot that is actually the this is I'm I'm obviously building up to something here the thing we disagree about and this is related to it so I can't ask you anything more we'll skip that I'll just say fingers crossed for egpus but I like the idea that we don't need them because Apple stuff is going to be so good that'll be all right I like that I actually spent a while considering um a 13-inch MacBook Pro versus a 16-in Mac Pro for a video editing whole series of projects I've got to do and I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion I'd have to buy a 16-in one because it has a separate GPU inside it I know it's not the same as an external GPU but it's separated Graphics processing unit and I was very reluctant about it because I think the 16in one is gigantic it's like this boat you're carrying around uh the idea that uh Apple silicon will make it will make the smaller one faster I might be making that up but I'm holding on to that hope if we get it though at some point it's going to go wrong and we're going to have to take it in for for repairs and something changed about this week that I know you wrote about an apple Insider you know all about um I forgot what it's called there's like a a a repair program what's going on the independent repair provider program that's the one um so what difference does it make where can I go so originally um Apple would allow authorized service providers only uh to service your Apple devices so you'd have to go to um something like the Apple store or uh more recently Best Buy to get your stuff repaired um that only added about a th000 stores uh to the repair program so while the selection grew it only grew a slight bit then Apple announced their independent repair program allowing you know not so big retailers to apply so your third party repair providers uh will be able to oper out of their own stores they have to apply through Apple proving that they're um an actual business and certified and everything and they go through the same process and training as authorized service providers getting the same documentation and help for free um once that's done they can actually service your products Apple added about 700 um of those stores to the US recently uh through if I remember about 120 uh new providers and they've actually expanded this project outside of the US to 32 more countries that all sounds that all sounds great in fact um that bit there where you said that they get the the the training materials and things for free I was wondering if this is Apple uh officially saying there's this opportunity for all these repair people but actually the process of getting on it uh if not charges to Apple then the the time and the cost was actually so much that businesses wouldn't take it on and apple could carry on Happily using its Apple Stores am I being really cynical and actually apple is doing a great thing here it's uh somewhere in between because if you examine this it the elephants in the room it's very obvious Apple wants to avoid the uh continuous L litigation on their right to repair uh movements going on throughout the United States and other countries um not being able to repair your device at home or have access to Parts uh makes people very angry um obviously if you own something you might want to repair it yourself especially if you have the knowhow to do so but apple does not believe that to be the case they should that they should be the ones fixing your very expensive devices so both sides um have significant arguments but at the end of the day apple is just trying to avoid um getting sued basically because you think they'd be bored if it's a day of the week and they haven't had a new lawsuit they'd be twitching but okay that makes sense you you actually remind me of um you know of because you write a about this on Apple as well the opening and closing of Apple Stores uh when the first stores in here in the UK were reopened um somebody was telling me uh they were there were film Crews outside one of the London stores and there was this massive queue going in and here the the response was really seriously for an Apple store for Supermarket a pharmacy yes but if you need apples you could buy it online why in the world would you be queuing around the block in London for this and they interviewed people on it and apparently the giant majority of people in the line were waiting to get things repaired so that was um eye opening actually just how much repair demand there is here in the UK it's not that the UK people are just rougher with their apple gear is it well if you uh are listening to this podcast there's chances you listen to other podcasters and um I happen to spend a lot of time doing so myself and many of them have the same um quandry here of oh no what happens if my very expensive iPhone Mac or God forbid Mac Pro decides to um die today and I need to take it to get it serviced where do I go well all these stores being closed what do you do are you just going to be without a production machine or you going to mail it off and wait a few months cross your fingers it's not exactly an ideal situation no that's a good point I used to have this habit that I would keep my last Mac around in case something went wrong but actually my last Mac died on its feet um so I had to move to a new machine and I have no backup which is partly why I've got a certain problem that we might talk about later today uh however Apple Stores um it's yes another reason why I want to talk to you about it because you're the one on Apple Insider that's keeping track of of this this madness of closing opening closing opening and things I mean Madness is the wrong word I just mean there's so much churn over it uh and things what's the the latest with stores reopening and reclosing how how we fixed across the states or across the world well it's actually going pretty well if you look at the World At Large um Apple has over 500 stores and they've opened almost uh all of them I think there's only about a 100 or so still closed and that's mostly in the US um we see these uh opening and closings happening over and over again in the United States because of how our government and how uh we we as a people are handling the whole Corona virus lockdown and these spikes and apple is doing their best to be reactionary well actually let me correct that preventative versus reactionary because they don't want these spikes to um H happen while in towns where these stores are open and then Apple you know be responsible for someone getting this virus they're they're doing everything they can to keep up with this so in States like Florida Texas Arizona California where we've seen massive uh spikes these last few weeks um they've begun closing stores again and it's you know 2 three five up to 50 stores now like it it happens very quickly I realized actually I don't know where where you based do you have a local Apple Store and are you able to go to it do you go to it well funny enough I'm in the middle of a move I was previously in Virginia Beach there was two stores right there near me uh one actually right across the street and but now I've moved to Tennessee where I'm about an hour and a half away from the nearest Apple store how could you leave somewhere called Virginia beach sounds great mind you Tennessee sounds pretty good as well okay uh I'm actually to two uh Apple Stores but I can't go near them my my wife is um on the sort of vulnerable list and advice here in the UK from the government is so contradictory I mean practically minute to minute the the population here we're just kind of ignoring the government and trying to make up our own mind over what we feel safe about and at the moment our applesauce are right in the middle of uh Birmingham city center Sol Hall City Center big uh arrangements and I would I want to go in and check out some things but I just can't it's going to be at least a month before I'm near any of them so it's going to feel weird walking into an Apple Store um by then I might have saved up enough money to buy something there though so you know when Virginia Beach reopened we me and my friend visited one of the stores just to get an idea of what was happening with the checkup process and everything and uh my friend upgraded their iPhone and we went through that whole thing with an Apple employee and it was just very very strange environment to see a totally empty Apple Store in the middle of the day with employees walking around with masks constantly scrubbing down surfaces and it was it was definitely very weird to be there I remember talking to an Apple Store uh employee about a month before lockdown just in the store waiting for something to about how they do things and they were already telling me that they they clean everything uh twice a day and that particular wipes for because of all the shared keyboards and stuff so they were already doing that stuff and now yeah apart from the cleaning and The Masks it sounds like you could have been in a Microsoft store that was harsh I don't think anyone's ever been in a Microsoft store to be honest I've been by one I was somewhere in California and I saw one right next to an Apple store and I was quite yeah poor old Microsoft closing their stores this episode is brought to you by masterclass masterclass is an incredible learning platform that all online and you can get masterclass apps on all your devices when you use masterclass you can learn about a wide variety of topics from experts in their field you can learn about science and scientific thinking from Neil degrass Tyson you can learn about the art of negotiation from Chris Voss you can learn about humor and writing from David Sedaris and so much more I've actually done the Han Zimmer course on music scoring which I loved and with the whole new SpaceX and NASA collaboration now going back into space after 9 years been brushing up with that Neil degrass Tyson course on scientific thinking 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whatever you're interested in whether it's makeup and beauty or humor and writing or cooking there is a master class for you I highly recommend you check it out get unlimited access to every master class and as an apple Insider listener you get 15% off the annual all access pass and you're going to want to take more than one class and so when you get that all access pass you can watch any of the master classes whenever you want go to masterclass.com slapple Insider that's masterclass.com slapple Insider for 15% off masterclass our thanks to masterclass for sponsoring this episode um I don't want to get too specific about things I want to buy but there is one thing that came out this week that I think maybe the two of us might be interested in uh Logitech has released new uh I was going to say apple brand G but that's not the right word um Apple specific gear they've redone their old k380 uh keyboard and made it Apple specific I honestly thought it was I used to have one to like loan it to a friend but apparently the new version has uh an apple key instead of a Windows key things are in the right way around the correct order and they're in new colors I so fancy a new keyboard for my Mac do you fancy a new keyboard for your iPad or are you sorted out well actually I recently purchased a mechanical keyboard for my desk setup um got one of those Kyron k2s and I'm loving it so far definitely miss it not being at my desk right now but it's a very nice keyboard I don't think I'll be upgrading anything anytime soon so wait that's a that's a full mechanical makes a lot of clacky noises and lights up sort of keyboard yeah red switches for anyone who's curious I was going to ask at okay so so you're a clacky kind of typer are you not too loud I don't want it to be booming through the house but yes it's not bad well I I actually learned to type on a manual typewriter so I'm used to a a raw as I start doing typing with things so for me quite little keyboards they I feel like I'm not working they're not making a noise but it's better for my fingers to use the Apple magic keyboard and things I'm just intrigued by the fact that you like uh heavy sounding keyboards but you're a strong iPad User so I'd have thought you know the light touch on the screen that you'd like that somewhere else but no you like that combination being able to switch back and forth is nice it's a more of a context thing you know I'm at my desk I'm at work the heavy duty keyboard you know or I'm lounging on the couch with my magic keyboard with a very mushy feeling and a compact design so it's very very good on my brain to be able to distinguish between the two environments all right I tell you what we do have more news we've got to cover more news but I can't wait this wait any longer would you like to explain what our big difference in apple gear is or shall I well go ahead the difference is I'm right and you're wrong there you go it's easy I would say a fair description is I am a as much as I love my iPad Pro my 2015 iPad Pro utterly adore it I am a heavy Mac User and you aren't any kind of Mac user at all is that true well to be fair I have a Mac Mini but it's more of a refrigerator than a Mac I keep it for Server use it does all those little Automatic download things and I keep my iTunes library locally but that's about all it's for I don't really touch it well but hang on that mean like all of us you can't survive without a Mac that's what I'm taking away from that oh absolutely yeah I don't think I can use my iPad as a server anytime soon true what I was wondering was whether or not you were it was a case that you were very Pro iPads or in some way anti- Macs uh which is it it's a tough question obviously I'm not anti-mac it's just something about the iPad form factor the software just how everything mashes together just uh clicks for me it it works I like being able to shift it from one device to another whether it be a tablet or a laptop or a desktop with a monitor you know it's that kind of system and no Mac can really touch that even though a Mac is more versatile in software and it can let you do things like xcode and side load uh software but those are just things I don't need in my daily life so the iPad covers all the bases I didn't see any reason to uh do otherwise did you um come to this conclusion and then buy the iPad or or is this kind of Taken time to go this way I was on this show a few weeks ago I can't remember the exact number I think 280 something uh 287 but I discussed this a little bit it was a it was a gradual change over time I actually switched from Android back in the day um Windows Android very heavy user if you knew me in 2014 I was praising the Google Gods um but the uh biggest difference here is it's just um over time I grew tired of the constant uh barrage of updates needed drivers needed please disconnect your hard drive before uh or unmount it before disconnecting it and just all the little tweaks and things that come along with using a desktop class computer it's just feels older even though you can buy the newest hardware and it zips along something about that system felt um a little old but Apple every time they update something with the iPad it just started catching my eye as wow this looks like it's going somewhere uh it's growing into quite the platform and I bought one and used it for a while alongside a Macbook and I just felt like I was using the iPad more and more and eventually I realized there was nothing I couldn't accomplish on the iPad that I was doing on the Mac so I just kind of did uh what Federico vtii did over at Mac stories and kind of followed his lead and started using the iPad as a daily driver do I okay he just said there's nothing you couldn't do with it I mean you did say about the server earlier but I get it in in all your all your day-to-day work or your day-to-day yeah your personal life and things but is that completely without compromise is there nothing you had to give up or change to make it work obviously there's going to be some uh weirdness some things um when I first uh completely ditched the Mac that was about if I remember correctly 2017 um there were obvious things you couldn't use a mouse uh properly or you couldn't connect external storage there's a lot of comprise to be made and luckily Apple has been addressing those things over time but even now there's still things that just don't work quite right um or weird limitations Apple has on their software that really shouldn't be there uh for instance the photos app on the iPad you can label faces you know you grab a little circle and label your faces manually on the Mac on the iPad you cannot do that so if the photos app doesn't recognize a face there's no hope for you you can't label it you have to go to a Mac and do it or another strange instance just carried over from iOS software of contacts app not letting you manage your groups you have to have a thirdparty app like card hop in order to manage your groups in contacts you can't do it on iOS or iPad OS it's a crazy Omission doesn't make sense I didn't know that I mean I use cop because I like cop I didn't appreciate that difference okay good old card hop then we should put a link to card hop in the notes just in case anybody hasn't heard it um I don't I think my difference here it comes down to the fact that I don't use these features I don't use face recognition but mostly because about 12 years ago now I was working on uh radio times it's like the UK cant of uh TV guide and I I had some job that was to do with the covers the covers of this magazine they're very famous there's parties about there books about them I wrote a book about them but um I had to collect them all and for some reason they ended up in photos and now every time I go into face identification it has uh like David tenant's face from Doctor Who on there none of my relatives or friends or me just countless people from BBC shows and things like that so it's become kind of worthless and I don't know how to undo all of that okay how many oh sorry a lot of my computer usage before joining Apple Insider was focused around casual use like anyone else or uh photography I really enjoyed going out and taking photos or doing photo shoots for my friends and um so yeah some of that definitely stems from uh wanting to have better like Photo features and whatnot there's other those are very obvious very Apple specific issues the bigger picture issues being um I mentioned before Google Apps uh that we use Google Docs for work and their apps are just not optimized their websites do not work on iPad the way you want them to you have to fight them every step of the way to get anything done in those apps on an iPad I I really admire Google's software and the features of it but admiration is different to using I found them all really ugly uh Mac or iPad so I just don't tend to go for them but I think I'm missing out there's lots of stuff I I wish I could do with Apple Mail For example that I know you can in Gmail so one day they'll all talk together nicely won't they no no no okay oh what I tell you this is getting a bit esoteric maybe but um uh when I use iOS uh a lot and we'll confess in the moment that we are using it right now I use shortcuts a huge amount but then on my Mac I have keyboard Maestro at Hazel all these things uh do you use much automation well all that there really is on iPad is um shortcuts I do use that for work and I have uh several personal shortcuts that I use uh we discussed that on the uh the same episode I mentioned before we had a little shortcuts talk but um just to reiterate uh just like the iTunes movies deals post I make every week um I generate that using a shortcut pretty much 90% of the data I enter comes from that shortcut and then I have to go in and manually edit a few things or I use um outside of that I use keyboard shortcuts so I don't have keyboard Myro and I can't execute commands from there but I can at least have pre filled out text that I can quickly type which helps out quite a lot when uh writing in links and whatnot for our pages I use uh text expender for some of that and and it is available on Mac iPad Android iOS exra sketch everywhere and things like that uh but you tend to do it through shortcuts or something like that something built the the keyboard um settings in iOS you can actually create your own custom keyboard shortcuts so like you type out a word or a phrase and it'll expand into a full phrase it's a very rudimentary version of what Texas expander offers but it works for me this episode is brought to you by expressvpn you ever notice that when you search for something online all of a sudden and you'll see ads everywhere for that thing sometimes you just want to search for something online and not worry about being tracked or have others know what you're searching for you might be thinking well I'll just use incognito mode but incognito mode doesn't hide your activity it doesn't matter what mode you use or how many times you clear your browsing history your internet service provider can see every single website you've ever visited that's why even when I'm at home I don't go online without using expressvpn it doesn't matter if you get your internet from Verizon Comcast Frontier or Spectrum isps in the US can legally sell your information to ad companies expressvpn is an app that reroutes your internet connection through their secure servers so your internet service provider can't see the sites that you visit expressvpn also keeps all of your information secure by encrypting 100% of your data with the most powerful encryption available most of the time I forget that expressvpn is running I leave it on on my Mac my iPad or my iPhone and it runs in the background that's how easy it is to use you tap one button and you're protected an expressvpn is available on all your devices phones computers tablets even your smart TV there's no excuse why you can't be using it so protect your online activity today with the VPN rated number one by CNET and wired visit our exclusive link expressvpn.com slapple Insider and you can get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package that's expressvpn.com slapple Insider expressvpn.com slapple Insider to learn more uh if you're an iOS user heavy iPad User are you willing or able or tempted to run the beta versions of iOS 14 iPad OS 14 or what well for me I'm a crazy person and I don't advise anyone do this but I am running iPad OS on my primary iPad Pro and Os 14 on my iPhone I have the Mac beta installed everything has it except for one little thing I have this iPad minu over here on iPad OS 13 just in case everything crashes and burns I can still work from there uh to the worry of my lead editor at least you do it on the I mean please seriously nobody should do this um I speak from experien I have burnt uh I burnt an iPhone some years ago about could get it to work ever no somebody fixed it for me in the end but took weeks um if you're on a Mac at least you could Bo boot from an external drive and and have it working and things if your iPad goes it's isn't it just murderously difficult to step back or undo a beza it's a process but it actually isn't as catastrophic as some people make it seem the key here is to have a backup from the iPad OS 13 version so that way you can easily do a factory restore andall inst that but the problem is is uh sometimes you encounter some errors you might need a Mac with the new version of xcode to get everything reset properly so it can definitely turn into a real headache if you don't know exactly what you're doing well I have a problem my Mac Mini I bought 2018 I love my Mac Mini but I got it with the smallest amount of SSD space available that's what I could afford I do not have enough room to install xcode on it to fix a problem like this so I I have put iOS 14 on a spish iPhone but I'm not putting anything else on anything except I got to admit I am a little tempted because it seems to me that this beta cycle is already more stable than I think it was last year is am I just lucky or does it seem stable to you well I have the curse of always having the latest and greatest and I I believe Apple optimizes specifically for those devices um from people who have older devices like uh Mike worthley and uh I think Andrew um O'Hara our video guy both have installed these betas on iPhone 10r 10s era devices and those are almost 2 years old now and they are struggling with a lot of basic features or getting random boot Loops so not everyone is having the perfect jolly time with uh iOS 14 oh that's worrying I was genuinely considered when B the SEC the second beta dropped this week I seriously considered putting it on my main iPhone but I'm going to be sensible and I thank you for this I think I you you're obviously much more familiar with beat software than I am I am you can hear it in me I'm afraid as much as I want to use it I'm a little afraid of losing access to machines that I I rely on so much but on this spare is iPhone I've now put two beaters of iOS 14 the first and the second and in both cases I noticed features I know were there weren't uh for at least a couple hours you know the um the app library and the first version of beta I ran it installed it everything's working there was no app library and then a little while later there was but it only showed me uh recently downloaded apps and then the next morning when I picked it up it's all there and working and then with beta 2 I pulled it in and I wanted to see what was new about widgets and you know when you edit the home screen you now get a plus button and the top corner you can add widgets I didn't there was no plus button but about an hour later when I picked it up to try something else uh there it was how can it be that beaters aren't they take a while to work is that unfathomable to you it uh doesn't make a lot of sense to me how some of these Things Fall Apart it sometimes these things break very uniquely so the it's just the way Apple connects all of their software and Hardware because everything being so tightly knit you never want to under look under that hood it' probably just be a Chasm of snakes it's it's Insanity so I it's probably one of those things where you're updating the device and everything is trying to catch up um those first few hours of any beta or new install uh your phone is just burning the battery away trying to process all the new information so that might be what you're running into that makes more sense when you say it that way it reminds me of things like um uh Spotlight on a Mac uh used to take a while to kind of get its act together and index everything and stuff before it would actually work I seem to remember that being quite a slow process and that makes sense as well a lot of data to handle for it I realized actually I tried to dodge something earlier when we were talking firstly about your being an iPad uh only user chiefly and then about the fact that you're a beta user I feel we should probably come honest become come clean now about what's going on at this very moment you are on a beta set of everything I am on a Mac that's properly on Mac OS Catalina everything up to date nothing going wrong with it at all except everything's gone wrong with it at all I lost the use of my Mac and the whole internet connection and everything a minute and a half before we were supposed to speak so this entire episode is in fact iOS based um did you do this to me to win the point oh yeah I sent the gremlin specifically to your house thanks okay I mean you see I know you know your stuff I blame you for this it's unfathomable to me that my entire internet connection has gone down and yet my iPhone is working on that same internet connection for it this is this is not technology anymore this is alchemy and we should have the Alchemy inside of podcast and incant incantations and it's about I'm just you got to stop me now I'm going off on WR very frustrating I think it's fantastically um revealing of how dependent we be come on our devices the moment we lose them I I have been working for about 8 hours 10 hours today writing different bits deeply absorbed in the work and then suddenly it was all taken away from me and it's like losing you know chopped off at your arms kind of thing by this it's probably not healthy to be this dependent and do you are you good at switching off machines and walking away generally speaking uh not too much I spend a lot of my time at work obviously working from these things and when I get off it uh basically switches to some other app or thing I'm doing um yes um I mean you shouldn't be like that you should get out there I mean particularly in Tennessee of all the places you should enjoy your local environment but I'm relieved because I'm the same um one thing I utterly loved that I have not yet found for myself on um iOS 14 because I'm not running it on my actual iPhone is this thing that you you can change your watch face you using a shortcut so you can have your watch face change from your work hours to your ledure time hours exactly at whatever time you're expected to finish I really fancy that have you been mucking around with anything like that cuz you are a shortcut user are you delving into that yet I haven't uh quite had time obviously in the middle of a big move but um it's definitely intriguing to me I have the beta on my watch because again I'm a crazy person but I definitely want to set up the watch faces changing throughout the day that's a really cool idea I already have watch faces for you know bedtime or daytime or exercise so just having those go off with certain automations would definitely uh be useful wait what exercise yeah let's not go into that no no no that's fine that's cool but I'm sorry you have the beta of watchos 7 you have all of your devices bu that one solitary iPad Mini are fully dependent on beat so for you are a bad example to the world but is it fun are you enjoying it they're very very fun yes uh no no problems here no boot Loops actually it's uh very impressive the one thing I heard about boot Loops is somebody was saying um actually it's Rosy Orchard on the automated podcast I think she was a great podcast she was saying that she washed her hands and uh that feature kicked in did what it was supposed to do but then kept looping and rebooted her watch other than that I think she said she was having no problems are you finding is the watch as steady as everything else at the moment yes uh no noticeable changes I use it for sleep tracking I totally uninstalled all my other sleep tracking apps and I've been using Apple's bedtime feature sleep tracking and all that and uh no issues and no battery life problems funny enough it just lasts the whole night and the whole day the next day without too much issue really that's very impressive okay I mean I I I was amused during uh the keynote speech I remember quite how they phrased it but they tried to make a virtue out of the fact that you know you could if you want to put your phone your watch on charge in the morning after you've slept and I read that as we're going to cream your battery you're going to be struggling but even in the beta you're saying not so much yeah if I had woke up this morning and went for a run uh I'd probably be much worse off forwar but right now I'm at about 54% and that's since I wore the watch probably about 8:00 p.m. last night at a 100% charge so I'm doing pretty good so far W I'm on 69% and it's been uh 12 hours that my thing has been on since charging okay that's what uh what version of the watch have you got uh the sorry the series 5 uh the bigger one oh right I've got the bigger series 4 things I forgot you said you are on the latest and greatest does that mean uh I don't know is that just a fluke of where you are now or are you going to switch over to the Series 6 when that comes out I'm pretty sure I'll get the Series 6 um I think they would they could just call it the Series 6 and I would buy it at this point but um hopefully they give us some nice features for it but yes I expect to upgrade right um and and what are you uh planning to do with your series five at all those usually get uh sold off to a friend or pass along somewhere okay right do you use you obviously use it cuz it's there at the time are are you uh conscious of and enjoying the always on stuff of the series five it's had its moments uh driving instead of having to jerk my wrist off the wheel and flip it around and try and wake up the face or touch it with my nose I can just look and see uh what's happening on the screen it's much better I truly thought I was the only one who knows his his watch every now and again um I think I probably wish it was actually we shouldn't talk about that kind of thing okay yeah okay I remember being uh really impressed when Apple came out with that and it was the feature that made me want to trade in my four but it was the only feature that want made me want to do it so maybe I'll be tempted by the six as well uh I mean I lasted on the original watch for a very long time so I maybe in that case I'm the opposite of you I have the cheapest oldest Mac Mini I have a 2015 iPad Pro the screen of which is is so uh it's not broken or cracked but it's no longer responsive in a lot of places and I have uh an OD watch that I hang on to Forever plus I'm a mat guy you're an iPad guy I'm surprised we're even talking frankly in fact I'm tempted to slam the phone down except there is one last thing I would like your opinion about please because of what you know particularly about iOS this I wrote a new story this week um based on the fact that there seem to be a number of users who are finding Apple music uh the app um when they're running iOS 13.5.1 Apple music app is draining their battery noticeably and not only noticeably while they're playing it even if they don't have an apple music subscription and are not playing anything through it they are seeing heavy usage and a noticeable drop in battery life I I am a heavy Apple music is I am a subscriber for it I've had nothing of this at all uh and fact I don't think anyone on Apple Insider has so I can't work out what's causing it but do you have any idea why one app could be affecting some people and not others it's hard to say Pro probably just a bug in background task management anything like that goes wrong and it could just suck down the battery life but I'm sure an update will uh fix that issue because I mean it's not happening over on iOS 14 as far as I can tell so oh that's a good point I forgot about that yes and actually wouldn't you normally expect battery problems uh on beta cuz I think batteries the last thing they will figure out isn't it yes the battery life seems to be the last thing they optimize for uh as older devices and batteries the the the final thing at the gate as they release it to everybody all right well I mean you can see that is they want to make it work first then they want to make it work better that makes sense but weirdly just as a last thought in my head uh before we finish tonight I it just suddenly occurs to me that come September or October whenever it is that we get the new iPhones and the new watch um aren't you you're not going to have as much fun as anybody else cuz you already have played with the software extensively for months are you going to be let down by the new releases well the summertime betas let me play with everything Apple's done but then the uh official release lets me play with everything the third party people are going to be doing so I'll have a whole another round of fun coming to me once this releases oh that is a perfect answer thank you very much for that can't top that no more calls we have a winner I so looking forward to omn focus as a widget on iOS 14 let's just put that out there but um well where can people find you when they need to well I'm hilly tech on Twitter you'll find a link in the show notes okay and I'm W Gallagher and as of next week it's back to Steven roers he'll come in and apologize for all the damage we've done over the last two weeks but hopefully also tell us how he has had a proper holiday away from screens and I'll be listening in to see what he says about that thanks w really good to talk to you at last and thanks everybody for listening\n"