146: M4 in the Door, iThinner than Air 📲 and Hey Bro, Find My Pencil Pro

(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for May 10th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

And I noticed it's a happy third anniversary to the podcast, Brett, three years we've been doing this now. - Oh my goodness, three years.

Okay, so what, that would have been our first recording was May, I think it was May 14th, right?

I think I just glanced over here, 2021.

Three years, my friend.

Hey, let's go three more, 30 more.

I love this. - And you know what you and I both did three years ago, Brett, we both got, or at least that's when Apple announced three years ago this time, the iPad that both of us are using right now, the iPad fifth generation, 'cause neither one of us had the fifth generation.

So here we are three years later, still going in this podcast and Apple had some announcements this week, didn't they? - Yeah, I know.

It's almost like we ran out of things to talk about, except for a little thing that Apple did this past week.

Oh my goodness. - Well, a lot of this was sort of quasi expected.

So let's just walk through, like, I'm gonna let you start.

You did an excellent post this week on iPhone JD, Jeff, on of course, what you always do, which is so great, why lawyers will love the new 2024 iPads.

Although I think so much of what you say is so applicable across all professions and anybody really asking the questions here.

But wow, I mean, it was 37 minutes, I think was the entire length of the announcement.

It wasn't live, it was all recorded, although there were pockets apparently in London and in New York where certain folks, very, you know, people that Apple like, were invited to do some hands-on and stuff like that.

But wow, some expected announcements, but then a few surprises and some good takeaways here.

It's been quite a week, catching up on all the stuff here, Jeff. - Why don't we start with, you wanna start with the pros or the air?

Why don't we start with the pros?

'Cause that's more interesting.

Although, you know, the reality is that, you know, I think the iPad Air is going to be a wonderful iPad for so many people because of the size.

You know, maybe we'll talk about that.

The iPad that I've been using for so many years through different generations, and you have it too, is what Apple have been causing, the 12.9 inch, which is great.

I mean, I love that bigger screen because you can see, you know, things are bigger.

So when I'm looking at documents or when I'm editing things, even when I'm just using it just to sort of watch movies and stuff like that, everything is nice and big and bold, and I love that.

You know, you have to get over it because when you transition from that middle iPad to the big one, at first, like for that first week or two, it's going to be like, oh my goodness, you know, this thing is like a cafeteria tray, but you do get used to it, and it's really nice.

So, but Apple's no longer having the 12.9 inch.

Now what they're going to have is the 13 inch, which is, it's almost exactly the same size.

The folio for the 13 inch is very close in size.

You can barely even tell the difference in size here. - Yeah. - Because I received yesterday my folder for the 13 inch iPad. - Oh. - You had asked me before the podcast today if I got the iPad Pro yet, and I didn't get it because I get it on Wednesday, but I did order it. - But you ordered it.

Yes, okay, very good.

I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I'm glad.

I figured that you already did.

Good for you, my friend. - I couldn't hold back.

There was just too many cool new features about it.

So let's talk about it. - Okay. - I mean, it's got the 13 inch versus the 12.9 inch.

That's not a big difference because it's basically the exact same size.

That's more of a naming difference than anything else. - Yes. - I guess the biggest change was that M4 processor, or at least one of the real big changes, which, you know, it had been leaked by Mark Gurman the week before.

So you and I talked about this last week of, you know, is it possible that there'd be an M4?

And they did.

And the M4, I mean, this is good because first of all, it's the latest and greatest Apple processor.

Apple isn't even selling the M4 in anything else yet.

Now, by the end of this year, I'm sure we'll see the M4 in many other things than Apple sells.

But this is the best current processor, the cutting edge.

But it's also interesting because the M4 processor, it's a real leap forward as I understand it.

The, you know, Apple wanted to, you know, chips are a different size.

And for years, you know, people would measure chips in nanometers and they had five nanometer chips for a long time.

The M3 was a breakthrough because it was the first time that the company was using a three nanometer chip.

And of course, if the chip is even smaller, then it can work faster 'cause it's got less, you know, things have to travel, you know, less electrons go faster and stuff.

So it was important to have the M3 because it was the three nanometer processor.

But the way that they got to it was a way that wasn't very efficient.

And so Apple came up with a new way to come up with a three nanometer processor.

And that's what the M4 is.

So like, this is the new, you know, for the future.

This is the platform of the future.

So the M4, it's got that same three nanometer, but a whole bunch of other things in it too, which means that it's super, super fast.

And, you know, I always joke, you know, why do you need the fastest processor if you're just sitting there typing a Microsoft Word document on your iPad?

Of course you don't.

But I feel like this is a unique time in history where with Apple about to do really interesting things in artificial intelligence, and the rumor is that Apple wants to have a lot of the AI on device, which of course is very processor intensive.

I think that this is the year that having a nice high-end processor, whether it's on an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac, I think that you're gonna start to see the advantages because of the stuff that Apple is gonna announce, at least in its earliest form next month at WWDC.

So, you know, if there was ever a time, if you think about the fact, you know, you and I both had our iPads for about three years.

If you think about the fact that, you know, your next iPad, you're gonna hold onto it for a number of years, you know, getting in with an M4 is gonna have some real staying power.

So I think that you're very unlikely to have regrets that, you know, oh, I wish I had waited a little bit longer.

No, no, this is gonna be good for that.

So that's exciting.

So then on top of that, you also have what, it looks like it's gonna be a beautiful, beautiful screen.

I mean, I love my iPhone 15 Pro screen and I know that you do too, because it's so bright.

You have HDR.

I mean, you look at photographs you take on this thing and it's almost realistic.

It's almost like you can reach out and touch it.

The only problem is it's small because it's an iPhone.

So if you can have that amazing, bright, high definition HDR screen, but big, so that everything is, you know, is real big in front of you.

I mean, gosh, that just sounds amazing.

And what's funny is that apparently, I guess when Apple used a regular OLED screen, they couldn't get it bright enough.

So they came up with this technology where they stack two OLED screens on top of each other so that they can get additional brightness.

And so as a result- - It's called tandem OLEDs. - Tandem OLEDs.

And so now they can have the same nits, which is the measure of brightness.

They can, it's the same nits you have on the iPhone, which is a thousand nits in normal use.

And then if you have a peak, like if you have one part of a picture that's super bright because it's got like the sun or a bright light or it's white, that one part of it can go up to 1600 nits.

So it's super, super bright.

And I've seen many pictures, and I'm sure you have in your iPhone too, where you have a part of it.

It's just, there's such a dynamic range between the brightest part of the picture and the blackest part of the picture.

Of course, that's the other advantage of OLED is the blacks look truly black, which is why they're so popular for televisions at home now.

So it's gonna have a beautiful screen, which again, for getting work done, isn't going to matter.

But for the things when you're just, you know, watching videos and looking at your pictures and stuff, that's gonna be amazing.

But the other really cool thing about it is the thinness.

And you know, this is the part of the presentation that you and I were texting each other as it happened.

And we were joking because Apple compared the iPad to what?

The iPod Nano, which, I mean, who would have guessed that Apple was gonna talk about the iPod Nano in 2024? - Nobody had that on their bingo card.

Nobody. - Nobody.

I meant to look back and I forgot, Brett, to see what year the iPod Nano actually came out.

I don't remember, but it's been a long, I mean, I'm gonna say it's been probably 20 years.

Look that up while I'm talking.

So, but the thing is, is that this newest iPad is the thinnest product that Apple has ever made.

The thinnest product.

I mean, they went back through all the things they've made over time.

Macs, displays, AirPods, you name it. - 2005, 2005, the iPod Nano.

Wow. - There you go.

So almost exactly 20 years.

And you know, you think that it's like the current iPad is pretty thin, right? - Yeah, yeah. - So this one is gonna be, you know, I wanna say it's like 80% of the size.

So it's gonna be noticeably thinner.

It's gonna be noticeably lighter.

And I say that because, I mean, we know that it weighs less, but the people that were at the, you were talking about the thing that they did for press in New York and London, where people got the hands on, Brett, and some of the, I mean, the initial reports were uniform.

People say, when you pick this up, it really feels light.

And that's gonna be really nice because when I'm sitting here doing work and I'm leaning back in my chair and I'm reading case law or briefs on my iPad, you know, you start to notice the weight after a while.

So to have more power, to have enough space, to have these two OLED screens stacked on top of each other, and yet they still managed to get it so thin.

The 11 inch version is I think 5.3, but the 13 inch version is 5.1 millimeter, which is just incredibly thin.

So- - Okay, okay, yeah.

Okay, I gotta stop there real quick.

First of all, it's the thinnest Apple device ever.

I mean, that's the way that they put this.

They compared it to the iPod Nano.

And I remember last week, that was one thing that I said, you know, we were thinking the M4 chip, we were thinking, you know, it's gotta be a better screen.

It's gotta be a better camera.

You know, there could be some really, but I remember saying specifically, Jeff, that the one thing that would probably push me over is if it was even more portable, lighter and thinner than the current 12.9 iPad Pro that I use because I carry this everywhere.

And just the fact that I could more easily slip it into my briefcase and that it would weigh less, just that alone for me, which is, you know, it's more streamlined, that would push me over.

And so when I saw that, I was like, that's it.

Like, I know that that's what I'm going.

And then of course, you've seen all the same things that I have, first of all, the iPad Pros are thinner than the iPad Airs, which has always been sort of like a weird thing 'cause we always think of the Air as lighter and thinner and, you know, and everything else.

That's amazing.

But then I think I saw this, check me if I'm wrong, Jeff, but the iPad Pro, the new iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, the new iPad Pro is thinner than the actual new Apple Pencil Pro, which we'll talk about in a moment.

But that just, like, that boggles my mind, just thinking about that.

And I cannot wait, other than the fact that I'm really scared I'm gonna sit on it now at this point. - Well, that is true. - And it's gonna bend. - And when you mentioned last week, Brett, you know, wouldn't it be nicer to have something thinner and lighter?

You know, I have to admit, I don't think, I don't know if I said this out loud in the podcast, but what I was thinking in my head while you said that is, well, yeah, I mean, wouldn't we all love to be thinner and lighter?

Sort of, you know, but it's not gonna actually happen, right, you know?

It's certainly not gonna happen now.

Maybe in the future, 10 years from now, iPads may be the size of a piece of glass or something like that.

But it didn't occur to me that they would be able to do it now.

And so that's what's so impressive.

It was a surprise.

If it wasn't for Mark Gurman's rumor, the M4 would have been a surprise as well.

But this thinner part was a surprise.

And it is funny, like you say, that it's thinner than iPad Air.

You know, when we think of the word Air, we think of when it first came out for the MacBook and it truly was thinner and lighter.

That was the advantage.

Nowadays, Air is just sort of the name that Apple puts on their mid-range products.

It's like, if you're looking for the middle of the road, you know, it's like the three, you know, is it too hot, is it too cold, or just right? - Yeah, you and I remember when Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, right?

And he took it out of like an office, out of the office mail-in envelope.

And it's like, that was so amazing.

That was the thinnest laptop we had ever seen in our lives.

Of course, at the expense of, you know, getting rid of ports and, you know, DVD players and everything.

But at the time, that was pretty amazing.

But that's why even the iPad Air, when it came out, I remember how great that that was.

And which, by the way, I just want to underscore something that you mentioned.

The iPad Air is thicker than the iPad Pros.

And one of the reasons that the iPad Pros can be thinner, I think they're taking advantage of the M4, the fact that they can put more onto that M4 processor.

And the iPad Pro 13-inch is thinner than the 11-inch iPad Pro, because they have more space that they can like spread out all of the capabilities inside, right?

So, you know, just thinking about it from like an engineering type of an aspect there, it is still incredible and amazing what they've done.

But that, to me, just even got me so excited about that too.

And I'm glad they did that.

In fact, go a little deeper into what you just said, Brett, as I understand it, and we're going to find out soon enough when they come out next week and people tear them apart.

But I suspect that they got it to be thinner by actually putting less battery in the new iPad Pros than the models they replaced.

And you're like, "But why?

Why would they have less battery?"

Because nobody wants to have lower battery life.

And they're like, "No, no, no.

Because the M4 is so much more efficient, we can get the same battery life with less battery."

And so Apple had a choice.

They had a choice of, "Do we want to keep it the same size and give people more battery life?"

Which would have been an advantage, right?

'Cause I mean, people would have...

Nobody would say no to more battery life, except that the iPads actually got pretty good battery life, right? - That's an excellent point. - And so Apple decided, you know what?

And this is just my...

I have no basis on this, but I think it's going to end up being turned out true, that people, I suspect, are going to find that there is actually a smaller battery in the newest iPad.

And that was because Apple made the decision of, "We've got this much more efficient M4.

Let's use it to make that super thin, thinnest product that Apple's ever sold."

And so, and you know... - Good choice. - We'll see if it's a good choice once we have it in our hands and can actually play with it.

But I suspect that, I mean, anyone that uses an iPad, you know, by definition, one of the things that you often do is you hold it in your hand for a long period of time because you're watching a movie, because you're doing work, because you're reading something.

And so that, you know, every little bit of thinness and lightness can really make a difference.

So I think Apple made the absolutely right choice.

So, you know, the big advantages of the iPad Pro versus the previous generations and the iPad Air, we're gonna get to in a second.

We talked about the brightness.

We talked about the thinness.

We've talked about the M4 chip.

It's got a whole bunch of other differences too, but the other differences are sort of some of the smaller differences.

I mean, it's things like, as has been the true for many generations, it's got four speakers instead of two.

It's got, you know, you can get more RAM.

If you want, if you get one of the higher RAM versions, you can get this nano texture coating on it, which means that if you're holding it and you're getting reflection from the sun or from the overhead lights, it will reduce that.

Again, in the past- - It sounds cool, but yeah, go ahead, go ahead. - I was just gonna say in the past, the problem with the nano coatings, not the problem, but the drawback is that sometimes the screen's not quite as bright.

Now this is a whole new technology.

This is not the same technology that Apple uses on their monitors, because obviously this has gotta be something you can touch.

It's a chemical process they use to change the quote unquote glass.

It's not really glass, but the plastic covering.

So we'll have to see what it's like in real life.

And maybe this one won't be darker, but I didn't really think very seriously about getting it because for me, I mean, every once in a while I see glare, but it's not a big deal for me.

It's not like I'm using it as I sit by the pool every day or something. - Right, right.

Who wouldn't want nano texture?

I mean, come on, that sounds so cool.

But I'm like, there is just gonna be like a 0.002% of the iPad using population that are like high end, like film editors, you know, that are working like in the desert, like when they were filming "Dune" or something, I'm gonna guess, right?

That they would need something like that.

The vast majority of us, don't worry, it sounds cool, but it's not something that I don't think the vast majority of people are gonna want.

We want as bright and crisp as possible on this, which is, which yeah, that's pretty amazing on there.

What about the camera?

Now, the back camera and the front camera, right?

I mean, the cameras are better, although it looks like they took away, I mean, our current iPads have, well, I guess we got the two cameras there, but they, it looks like they changed a little bit.

The camera- - Well, they took away one of the cameras because the previous generation iPad had both the regular camera and also an ultra wide camera.

And what they did is they took out the ultra wide camera.

And you know, in my mind, good riddance, because I mean, I virtually never use my iPad as a camera with one exception that we're gonna get to in a second.

I suspect it's the same exception that you use it for too.

But just, if I'm regularly taking pictures, it's just, it makes so much more sense to use my iPhone to take pictures.

It's small, it's handheld, it's got better cameras anyway. - Better cameras, right. - And so why not use the iPhone to take pictures?

So I don't really need to have a second camera on my iPad.

And my guess is that by removing that second camera, which people weren't using anyway, I'm sure Apple knows exactly how many people, how often people use the features.

If you take away something that people weren't really using, then no one's gonna notice it's gone.

So you save some money, but also it probably helps you to get to that thinner size, right?

You've got fewer things, fewer components.

You can replace that with some battery space that you're using to make it all thinner.

So I say good riddance.

Now, the one thing that I sometimes do use my iPad camera for is I often use my iPads as I'm reviewing documents.

And most of the time, those are virtual documents, right?

They're PDF documents, it's electronic versions, but every once in a while I will encounter, and I know you do too, a real document.

And you want to take that piece of paper and you want to get it into your iPad.

And so what do you do?

You use a scanning program and you scan it with the iPad's camera, 'cause it's just what happens to be in your hand at the time.

And then you scan it and then you have a digital version that you can annotate on.

And Apple even made this process better too, because they have adjusted the flash on the back of the iPad so that, right now when you take pictures with an iPad, one of the problems is that the iPad's so big that it casts a shadow on the document.

And so like the top half of the document is white and the bottom half of the document is a little gray. - You get the dark area, right, yeah. - So Apple said, yeah, that's an issue.

And so they found a way to adjust.

And I don't know how it works yet.

We'll find out in a few days when I have it.

But I mean, somehow they're pulsing the flash in a certain way that they're gonna use, between that and I'm sure there's gonna be some AI involved, they're basically going to remove the shadow that gets cast when you take a...

So again, scanning documents with my iPad is not a huge deal.

They never have to be pristine for me anyway, but making them better, why not?

So they took away the part of the camera that we don't use.

They took the part of the camera that we actually do use for scanning documents and made it even better.

Bravo, Apple, good job. - What about the front camera, Jeff?

You seemed like you were pretty excited about this. - Actually, no, the front camera, I mean, again, well, actually, I'm sorry, I know what you're getting at.

You're getting at the placement of the front camera.

That is the big difference.

I was gonna say I never use it, but that's not true.

The one time that I do use the front camera is for video calls, FaceTime calls, Microsoft Teams, Zoom calls.

And I have long hated the fact that that camera is off on, for me, it's usually on the middle of the left side.

And the problem is- - Yeah, 'cause we have it in landscape mode, right, exactly. - When you're doing a call, you're looking at your screen, but because the camera is off on the side, to everybody else, it looks like you're looking this way.

And they're like, why is Jeff looking off to the side?

Why isn't he staring at us?

And again, people are used to this already because so many people already know they don't look at their camera, they look at the screen, but it was just so off-center to be on the side that it became obnoxious. - It was obvious. - And so I would have to purposefully try to stare at that little dot on the side.

But what they've done now, they've moved it, they've moved it to the top.

It's right underneath where the pencil goes.

I think this is part of the reason that they had to re-engineer the Apple Pencil is so that the magnets that hold the pencil are not covering up where they need to have the hole for the camera.

But that makes so much more sense.

It should have been there a long time ago.

Apple did this, what was that, two years ago, Apple did this with one of the models of the iPad, maybe, I forget if it was the Air, which one it was, but this is the second time that Apple has moved the camera to the top and it belongs there.

And it belongs there on the Pro device because the Pro device is for people that are really getting work done.

So that was a welcome change, but that was one of those, you know, finally, finally. - Right, so a quick question on that, 'cause we don't know 'cause we haven't seen it, but first of all, moving the camera up there means that it's underneath the pencil, just like you said.

So that alone takes some kind of an engineering guru to make the camera there and the magnets for the Apple Pencil and the charging mechanisms on there.

So that leads me to my next question.

Did the bezels around the screen get any smaller than what we currently have on the 12.9?

I mean, again, we gotta look at it.

From the pictures that I've seen and the ones that you posted and I see on apple.com here, it doesn't look like the bezels got any smaller, which I don't know, I'm not saying one way or the other whether it should go, because sometimes I like having just enough of a bezel to hold onto the edge of my iPad or something.

But I just wondered, did we get any reduction?

I haven't seen anybody really talk about that at all. - I haven't, and I suspect it's because the people that were at the Apple demo, like didn't, the reduction, if there was a change in the bezel size, it was probably so small that you would need to have like, you know, something, a really precise measuring device and people just didn't have that with them.

We're gonna see that next week once people start putting them in their hands.

I did notice that the number of pixels on the iPad Pro is just ever so slightly bigger, both on the vertical and the horizontal, but it's so slightly bigger that it's almost, I'm sure Apple wasn't trying to make that change.

It was probably just a consequence of the size of the screen that they were using. - Right, right. - But for all practical purposes, and this is why I was joking before, you know, this is, and we're gonna talk about this in a second, the Folio, but the Folio for the new iPad 13, if I take my current iPad and I put it inside of it, it basically fits.

I mean, you can't really notice a difference in the size.

It really, there's, for all intents and purposes, it's the same size.

In fact, so much so that you may wonder, well, then why did they even come out with a new Folio?

Why didn't they just keep it exactly the same size?

And I actually have some answers for that, but I'm gonna hold off after we get to it. - Oh, good, okay, okay. - A little bit further in the podcast, okay. - So you had a couple of links to some others here because that's the iPad Pro. - Yeah. - We've mentioned the iPad Air.

So there was the two announcements, and I thought this story from Michael Pocuk was really good in doing a comparison, and you had another link here between, let me ask it this way.

Would it be safe to say that the new iPad Airs that they announced are pretty much what the current day iPad Pros are?

I know there's a little bit of a few differences, but it just seemed like from a lot of people that I've seen in reports, Jeff, that it's like if you have a current day iPad Pro 11 or 12.9, then that's pretty much what the iPad Air is going to be.

Like the weight of it, the size of it, obviously I know there's a little bit different, and it has an M2 because our current, you and mine current iPad Pros have an M1.

And so I feel like we, you and I are gonna see quite a bump 'cause we've had ours now for over three years.

We're gonna see quite a bump in going up to that M4.

But I still, just like you and I have talked about, find that the M1 iPad Pro I have is probably way more than I need for the things.

I am not doing high-end video editing.

And so that's why you said this almost right at the very beginning here, the new iPad Airs are probably gonna be more than enough for the vast majority of people that we, you know, professionals, all of that.

It's just, of course, we know that because Apple does sell the iPad Pro, some of us are gonna go ahead and upgrade all the way if we can.

But the iPad Pro really comes out of the gate as an amazing device in and of itself. - The selling point of the iPad Pro is it's got cool new features.

Thinness, brightness. - Okay.

Yay, I like that. - The selling point of the iPad Air is that it is a reasonable price, but it gets all of these incredible features that used to be only on the Pro model.

That's, and you just said it.

And that's the way that Apple's putting it too. - That's good. - The screen on the new iPad Airs is literally the same screen that you and I have on our current iPad Pros.

So it's the exact same size, everything else.

It's again, it used to be called 12.9 inch.

Now they're calling it 13 inch, but it's the same.

It's the same screen.

The processor, like you said, being an M2 processor, that's the same processor that came out on the sixth generation iPad Pro that you and I did not buy.

And it's even better than the fifth generation.

So for anybody that has an older iPad, with maybe the one exception, if you had the iPad Pro, but nobody would update from an iPad Pro to an iPad Air, I don't think.

Virtually everybody that would get an iPad Air is gonna find, wow, this is so much better than what I had been using before.

And it's got a lot of features.

Like speed and a beautiful screen, although not the nicest screen.

It's got all these features that I normally would have called a pro iPad, which I think is fantastic.

And so this is why for professional users, like the lawyers that I tend to talk to day in and day out, there's now no reason for me not to recommend the iPad Air because it is such a fantastic, powerful device.

And the only reason that for professional users, I used to say, well, you might wanna get the Pro is because of the 13 inch screen, because that bigger screen is so nice.

And as I said on my post, I used to feel bad 'cause I'm like, well, you're gonna pay so much more money for the Pro and you're gonna love the big screen, but you're also paying money for features that you probably don't care as much about.

But now you don't have to worry about that.

You can save a couple hundred dollars, use that extra money to get an Apple Pencil or something like that.

And, but you can get the Air and you can get the Air with the 13 inch screen.

And I think that for so many users, for many users that are gonna love the standard iPad screen, 11 inch, that's great.

It's been a tried and true since the year 2010.

If you wanna go with that same size, go for it. - Good screen. - People love that screen size.

It's easy to carry around.

You can more easily put it in your briefcase or your purse, wonderful.

But if you want to go a little bit bigger just to make, to see things more clearly and to work with bigger documents, 13 inch is a fantastic size.

And the idea that you can now get that in the Air with an M2 processor and all this other, I mean, this is fantastic. - Yeah. - The mid range of the iPad has never been better.

And so this is why it's just gonna be, this is a fan.

No new iPads came out last year and some people were upset about that, but it was worth the wait because now we're in a situation where you can get a fantastic mid range iPad.

It's gonna be so wonderful.

And then if you decide, I'm gonna spend a few extra hundred dollars because I wanna have something that's a little bit thinner, a little bit brighter.

You know, I don't mind paying extra for some premium features, go for it.

That's what the pros are for, but you don't need to go for it if you don't want to.

So it makes for a really fantastic lineup. - This was a good article you linked to in Six Colors from Dan Morin.

This is the lineup as it stands right now.

So they introduced the new iPad pros.

That is the premium, as you said.

Next level down are the brand new iPad Airs, which to me are like last year's iPad pros, like we were saying, but they call it iPad Air. - Okay, it's a marketing term right now at this point.

Now there is still, what do you call this?

The iPad nothing. - Just the iPad. - The iPad vanilla.

Just the iPad.

But there's no longer touch ID on this.

Am I correct?

Like they have taken away some of these things or do they still have that basic touch ID? - It used to be the low end iPad still had the button on it.

Now the button is gone.

There's no button at all.

I'm gonna say button, I mean the button, you know. - Yeah, yeah, the home button. - Now you do have touch ID, but it's touch ID in the button on the side. - Oh, that's right, that's right, okay. - And that's another distinction.

With the iPad pro, you don't have touch ID.

You don't log in with your finger.

It has face ID, just like an iPhone, which is a nice feature.

I really liked the fact that I looked at my iPad and it unlocks for me.

It's very nice.

If you have touch ID, which is in the button, it just requires you to manually pick up your hand and touch the side.

It's not a big deal. - My wife doesn't like it, yeah. - That's the thing.

So it's another example of why you're getting the premium feature, face ID with the pro. - That's a good point. - And you're getting a perfectly fine feature, which is touch ID on the iPad Air.

So the low level iPad has the same thing.

It's got the touch ID through the power button.

So you just put your finger on it.

It senses your fingerprint and it logs you in.

And so that's the iPad.

So, and again, the iPad, it's been around for a while.

The big selling point of it is the price, right?

It now starts at $350. - Sure. - So if you're looking for something for a kid, for a school, it's great.

It doesn't have the oomph.

There's so many things that it lacks support for the new pencil, which we haven't even talked about yet.

You know, there's so many things it doesn't have, but it's just a nice standard iPad that's cheap and inexpensive. - And here's the thing, Jeff.

There's a whole world, and Apple knows this, and I feel like that's why they still have these in, from like what we call point of sale aspects, right?

Like a restaurant.

I just took the family to like a Korean barbecue restaurant.

How did we order our food?

There was a waitress, but all that she did was come and say, "Hello, and here's your drink."

We ordered everything off of an iPad, right at the table, and it came and delivered.

And you see this, all of us see this.

We go to a coffee shop and they have an iPad.

Like there's so many instances where this low level, I hate to say it that way, but the iPad regular, nothing, vanilla. - Yeah, that's all you need. - There's so many uses that you can use.

They don't need an Air, or certainly don't need an iPad Pro on some of that.

And so I feel, you know, sometimes I feel like people are like, well, why is there even that still there?

But just like you said, for a kid, for a school, there's so much, I mean, I would even venture to say, if we saw Apple break that out, we might see that there would be more of those being sold than anything else.

Just because when you talk about schools buying this, or restaurants, or you know, whatever the case may be, there's hundreds and thousands of those that are being sold.

But wait, that's not all.

As Dan says, at the tail end, I think I heard in the 37 minute presentation, Tim Cook mentioned the iPad mini one time. - One time. - Right?

Is that right?

I think one time, we didn't even see it.

He didn't give any details about it.

He just mentioned, oh, by the way, it's still there.

In other words, it's like, hey, there's still the iPad mini.

Hey, we're still here.

Some of us were a little disappointed that we didn't see some kind of an additional acknowledgement of that, or even an upgrade, but we didn't get it.

But it's still there.

You can still get a mini if you want one. - I think it's my prediction, and this is just based upon my gut, and it could be wrong, is that the iPad mini, I mean, there's always the risk that Apple's gonna give up the iPad mini, much like they no longer have an iPhone mini, but the mini version of the iPhone.

But I think that they're gonna have another iPad.

And I really do think that at some point this year, maybe for the Christmas holiday cycle, they're gonna update that iPad mini.

The thing about that iPad mini is it uses a process, it uses one of the older processors.

It's not on the M series.

It's overdue for an update.

But most people that use the iPad mini, just because of its size, you're not using it to get serious work done.

You're using it for reading a book, reading a book, watching a movie, something really small, handheld.

It's been many years since I owned an iPad mini, but when I used to own one, I loved it because it was so tiny and so small and so portable.

But it could use a little bit more oomph to it.

So I do think that at some point, much like Apple's gonna bring the M4 to the rest of its line, I don't know that they're necessarily bringing the M4 to the iPad mini, maybe just the M2, but I predict that at some point, that's the one part of the iPad story that I think Apple is still waiting to update.

And it would be great if it happened later on this year, because then for the holiday buying season, everything would have been updated this year.

But that's just sort of the ones, they didn't get to everything.

That was the one part they didn't quite get to.

And if you're gonna have to get, that's the part that probably has the fewest sales.

So it makes sense to get to that last.

Let's do the iPad Air, let's do the iPad Pro.

We'll deal with the mini later. - I wanna return just briefly back to the M4, quickly on this.

I thought this was an excellent article, the insight from Jason Snell on his regular article on Macworld.

And just 'cause he can see the bigger picture here, right?

I mean, first of all, let's just not gloss over the fact that we have an iPad Pro now that is skipping an entire quote generation of these processors.

There is no M3.

We went from an M2 to an M4.

First of all, again, in the bigger picture from my observation, Jeff, just the very fact of how fast that we have seen these improvements is amazing in and of itself.

I mean, it's like you've heard the same podcast that I have this week.

It's not like Apple decided two and a half months ago that it was like, hey, let's do the M4, right?

They've been talking about this and planning about this for a long time.

It's not like you can just turn a whole processing plant around and say, let's spit out an M4.

Like they've been planning this for a while, which means right now, they're already talking about M6, M7, M8.

Who knows what they're talking about, right?

None of us are gonna know that kind of information.

I'm just pointing that out because we remember the days when we would wait for the next generation of the Intel processor and they were doing the best that they could at the time.

It's just amazing to me how quickly and how fast because now that we have something, an actual Apple product that's using the M4, as you know, as we all know, less than a month now, WWDC is gonna be happening.

Who knows what they're going to be announcing then.

Or we're setting up now for having the M4 into a variety of different products to your points that you've already made here, including I think some of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros at least and MacBook Airs.

You know, we're gonna see this now, I think trickling down into some of the other products from Apple as well.

And this sets them up not just for the product line, but of course the gorilla in the room that I don't think we've even, we've gone what now, you know, we've been doing this for 40 minutes and we haven't even mentioned AI.

But that's the other thing that we did talk about last week that they're setting up.

The fact that they're getting these M4 chips with by the way, the neural processing unit on this M4 chip, which Apple has been putting in for years and years, they're setting this up for the future on this.

And I thought Jason's column here was really good and insightful on that too. - Yeah, every new chip generation is gonna be better than the one before it in some way.

But sometimes these chip generation leaps are even bigger.

You know, when the first M1 came out, it was a huge leap from what we had before with Intel.

And my sense is that this M4 is a substantial leap forward.

And that's the reason why Apple is probably not gonna end up putting M3s in many processors.

So many things it's gonna move directly from the M2 to the M or even the M1 in some cases to the M4.

And I think this is gonna be the new platform.

So it's exciting that this is coming first to the iPad for those of us that love the iPad, but don't get jealous if you're not an iPad user because I really do think that by the end of this year, there's gonna be an M4 in the Macs, the MacBooks, there's gonna be a version of the M4 that's gonna be called A, you know, whatever the, what's our next number, A18, whatever it is for the iPhone. - Yeah, right, right. - But it'll basically be the mobile version of the M4.

It's coming everywhere.

It's, you know, by the end of this calendar year, we're gonna see M4s, I'm sure, throughout the Apple product line. - Jeff, the most important question, you've already ordered your iPad Pro 13-inch.

It's gonna be here next week.

Was it the space black or the silver?

Which one did you get? - I got the space black.

I've always liked some of the darker black colors, yeah. - I know, I, you know, I'm looking at my current 12.9 iPad Pro and I guess I got the silver or maybe the aluminum.

Can't remember what the colors were, but I gotta tell you, I do like the svelteness of the black, the space black here, and I think that's what I'll get, which by the way, if you are going to be in the market for the iPad Air, Apple did announce some slight gradients of colors that you can select on this.

I think my favorite, they mentioned purple, for example, but I think my favorite description of the purple that somebody said was breath of lavender.

Like people were complaining, I don't know why people were complaining so much that these, they talk about colors, but apparently they're not like vivid as what a lot of the people that were doing the hands-on were looking at, like they wanted something a little bit more.

I guess I'm okay with it.

Sometimes I just kind of like the slight gradient, but man, people were really up in arms about the colors.

They were not vivid enough for them. - That's the iPad Air.

I forget what the colors all, oh, here we go.

They have blue and purple, they call it purple, starlight.

And of course they have the space gray.

And I don't know if they have the silver.

Is that the first color?

Oh, all the colors on there.

Anyway, I think they're kind of pretty on that. - Yeah, I don't know why it is that Apple decides the iPad Pro, the Pro lines can only get basically dark and gray, whereas the consumer lines, the mid-level lines, they get more color.

I don't know why, you know, why doesn't Apple have a professional one that's got all sorts of fun colors to it?

Who knows?

I don't know. - Right, right.

Okay, so I feel like we have circled all the way around the new announcements of the new iPads.

There's more we'll say in a minute, but how about let's move now to some of the accessories that were also announced with the iPads, which I gotta tell you, as excited as I am about the iPads being announced, Jeff, I may be a little bit more excited about the two main accessories.

Let's start with the new Magic Keyboard, which apparently you did not order, my friend. - No, because I really have never, I mean, these Magic Keyboards have always tempted me because it's such a great way to get a nice keyboard in a case, but the thing that has kept me away from them is I don't want my iPad to weigh so much.

And if I keep my iPad, if I had a keyboard, if I had the Magic Keyboard, I would probably keep it in that case all the time, which makes my iPads always heavy when I'm carrying it around and I don't want it.

Now that's part of the reason.

The other reason for me is I happen to have in my office, one of these Logitech keyboards that I can just press one button and it connects to my iPad.

And likewise, when I'm home, there's ways that I can use it.

So I basically have a keyboard wherever I want.

I have a simple, a small little Apple portable Bluetooth keyboard that I take with me when I travel.

So for me, I don't really need it, but I do understand the appeal of the Magic Keyboard.

I'm more interested in the Folio and I wanna talk about that in a second, but since you are a Magic Keyboard user, what, I mean, obviously the function row, you tell me what makes this, and let's just make it clear that what we're talking about is the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro because for the iPad Air, it uses the current Magic Keyboard that we already have or something basically the same.

But if you get an iPad Pro, you get a new type of Magic Keyboard, what jumps out at you, Brad? - I know that I'm very excited.

I mean, I'm gonna get it.

I'm gonna get the new Magic Keyboard because we've talked about this many times.

I got the Magic Keyboard.

I knew that it was gonna be something.

I love the little floating aspect that happens there.

And I just love actually having the full keyboard.

I mean, for my first iPad, I think just like you, we used to use those, oh, it wasn't 12 South.

It was one of those little key, it was basically an Apple keyboard.

And then the cover would fold out. - I still use this today.

I still use that. - Oh my goodness, you have, okay, you know exactly what I'm talking about then.

I always wanted to have the ability to have a keyboard with the iPad, not because I wanted to use it that way all the time.

And this is to me where I wanna talk about also is just that blurring between the iPad with a full keyboard and a track pad is different than a MacBook Air.

I don't know. - Very close, very close. - Very, very, very close in many, many ways.

But I knew that I always wanted to have that capability to jump on the iPad.

I like holding the iPad without a keyboard, using it keyboard.

But then all of a sudden, say for example, somebody sends me a text message and I wanna reply via text message.

How do I do that?

Honestly, I just love slapping it back into the magic keyboard and typing my reply in that as opposed to dictating or something else along those lines.

The fact that they have doubled down on this magic keyboard from the sense of even making it more functional, to me, it's just, there's a function row and I'll get into, this is my favorite thing.

It's just the fact that it's a function.

There's an escape key on there now.

I think one of my tips from one of the weeks, Jeff, was the fact that how can you do an escape function on the magic keyboard without an escape key?

And it was like command period, I think is what it is.

That's a keyboard shortcut on the Mac as well.

But the fact now, because typically I will find myself, muscle memory going up and trying to hit an escape key.

And unfortunately on the current magic keyboard that I have, it's a tilde.

And so I have a lot of tildes in my documents all the time.

But I love on my Mac being able to use the play button, the pause button, the brighter screen, the lower screen, raise the volume, all that kind of stuff.

And just that alone, to me, it's very pricey, but to me that alone was something that sold me.

And then the trackpad, I love having the trackpad.

You could use any Bluetooth mouse with an iPad Pro.

That support has been in there.

But the fact that it's built in now into the keyboard has been something that I love.

And now it's even bigger on this magic keyboard.

So I'm a big fan of it, other than the fact that maybe for the first time since we've had iPads and Macs, Jeff, I'm thinking, do I need both at this point?

I mean, again, I know this is a, something that lots and lots of people have been arguing, but at least for me as a nerd, I'm finally getting to the point like, oh my goodness, this could be more expensive to buy a fully decked out iPad Pro 13 inch with the Apple Pencil Pro and with the new magic keyboard than if I'd have got a Mac MacBook Pro.

I mean, it's very, very, very close, even closer than I have remembered in the past. - Yeah.

I love your enthusiasm for it though, because I know that you use the keyboard all the time.

This really does look like a nice one. - I do. - And like you say, it makes it so that the iPad is almost a Mac.

I mean, that's the best way that you can say it. - Right, right. - With this keyboard, nice trackpad, everything else.

You know, I've explained the reasons that I don't use it.

Let me talk about what I did get.

So since I did not get the magic keyboard, what I got was the Apple Smart Folio.

And so Apple has been making ever since the first iPad, - Just the Folio, because there's a Folio keyboard, but just the Folio is what you got. - So what it used to be called was the Smart Cover.

And it was just the part that covered up the screen.

And then over the years, Apple added the Smart Folio.

So it covers both the front and the back.

And arguably the reason it covers the back is protected.

But I think the real reason that it does that is because it allows Apple to do some interesting things.

So I'm holding right now my current, which is an old iPad, and I'm putting it in the brand new Folio.

And it basically fits.

However, even though it technically fits in terms of size, what it doesn't do is attach.

It doesn't attach because the batteries that hold it in are in different places.

And I'm like, oh, that's odd.

I wonder why, the magnets, excuse me.

I wonder why Apple moved the magnets around.

And I think I know the reason why.

And the reason why is that even though Apple has been making this Folio for many, many, many, many years, they now have a new feature with it.

And the new feature is it doesn't have just a single viewing angle.

It has multiple viewing angles.

In the old Folio, which I'm holding right here, you can fold it up like this, and you can have it that your iPad sits here.

And I do this every single day throughout the day.

It sits there and I look at it at my desk, and I'm looking at my iPad, I'm looking at my computer screen, I'm going back and forth.

And it's really, really nice.

But this new Folio, it actually, the part that bends is actually much smaller.

So this part is thinner.

It's just a small, tiny little part that goes back and forth.

And when you fold it up, you can put that all the way at the bottom, in which case it's almost straight up in the air, or you can take it and you can magnetically attach it a little bit higher, and then it's leaned back.

And there's three different places you can attach it.

So they have to have these three different levels of magnets so that you can attach it in three different places.

Now, the funny thing is, if I put it like at the top, so that it's a little bit more leaned back, and if I take my current iPad and I put it on here, now admittedly, the magnets don't hold it very well, but you know what else that happens?

The whole thing collapses.

And I think that's because the difference in weight between my iPad, which is a little bit heavier, this thing can't quite hold it.

But with the new iPad, again, being lighter and thinner, I guess it's gonna be balanced, that it's gonna be able to hold on to these three different positions.

So, you know, my guess is that Apple decided, you know what, if we have a thinner and lighter iPad Pro, it's not gonna push back on the Folio quite as much.

We can take advantage of that by making the Folio a little bit more interesting by having three different adjustment levels.

It's a minor little feature that most people are not gonna notice, but it's a nice new feature.

Why not do it?

So again, I won't be able to test it for real until I get the brand new iPad on, hopefully on Wednesday, to put it in there.

But it was one of the first things I noticed is that magnets are in different locations and they do different things in those different locations.

Even though from the outside, the Folio looks exactly the same as the, almost exactly the same as the Folio I have.

So I'll be curious to try that out for real.

Before the Magic Keyboard, I used a Smart Folio because I always wanted to have a way to protect the screen.

I just liked the idea that it was there and it was built in, so it wasn't like a separate case that I had to slide in and out.

I could, you know, fold, I mean, I believe, and still in the Smart Folio, right, you can fold the entire cover like back around itself.

So basically you can hold it and it still is attached on there.

See, that to me is brilliant in the way that it does.

But I just wanted the efficiency of being able to have the keyboard built into that.

And a lot of other people did too.

I like this other article that you linked to from The Verge where Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio was something that a lot of people love for that, right?

There's a keyboard built in, but you can fold it back on itself, right?

So that it just becomes basically a little bit of a cover, but there's still a keyboard that's built in.

But Apple has now discontinued the Smart Keyboard Folio.

I gotta tell you, I get so confused with the way that they named these.

There's the Magic Keyboard. - They all sound similar. - There's the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, the Magic Keyboard, just by itself, there is the Magic Keyboard Folio, and then there is the Smart Keyboard Folio that Apple just discontinued, and then the Smart Folio.

Right, that's what you have. - It's all confusing. - No keyboard.

I know, it's so much. - The difference is, the product that Apple has discontinued, it was really nice because it was a very light keyboard.

But the problem is, is the keyboard itself, and I used to play with them when I went to the Apple stores just to sort of see how it feels.

They were like these chiclet keys, it's sort of like a fabric covered key.

And it wasn't real touch typing.

I mean, I guess you could get used to it.

But, so you had to decide, do I wanna have a keyboard a little bit, but I really want it to be light?

Well, fine, this is for you.

Or do I wanna have a real good keyboard, and then you wanna get the model that you've been using, the Magic Keyboard.

So I guess I can understand why Apple removed it from their lineup for the iPad Pro.

But it is an accessory that some people did love, and now Apple is telling it goodbye, so. - It's an accessory that will hit your wallet.

The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, if you wanna get it, is 299.

Which I gotta tell you, when I heard that, Jeff, I was like, yay, they reduced the price.

'Cause I remember I paid 349 for my Magic Keyboard three years ago.

So I'm happy about that, even though people are still looking at it like, what are you, crazy?

That's $300 for a keyboard. - When Apple first came out with that Magic Keyboard, it was $350, and they sold it at that price for a while.

And then over time, they reduced the price to $300, which I was happy to see.

And then you could even get it on sale for sometimes, you know, 270, 280, something like that.

And so I was thrilled that even though they added some extra features to this thing, that extra row of keys at the top, they did not increase the price.

It's nice to keep it at 300, and I suspect on sale, it'll be a little bit less.

So, so yeah. - That's the keyboard.

One other accessorize that came out was the Apple Pencil Pro.

So now we've got a whole lineup of different Apple Pencils, but the Apple Pencil Pro, I'm so excited about this, Jeff.

We talked a little bit about it.

We wanted some improvements, and I think Apple delivered with this for sure. - I think so.

In fact, what I'm gonna recommend is just for time reasons, since I'm gonna hopefully have the new pencil on my hand next week.

You know, let's just talk about it real quickly. - Yeah, yeah, agreed. - We'll talk about it more next week when we have it.

I mean, just to hit the highlights, the new Pencil Pro is the same size and the same look as the current pencil.

The only way that you even know the difference is because it says Pro on the side of it.

It just writes the word Pro. - That's it. - But otherwise, the look is the same, but it still has the feature that you can double tap it and stuff like that.

But what it adds is a feature that you can squeeze it.

And when I first heard that squeeze could be a feature, I'm like, oh, is that gonna be like, if I tap it, it's one tool?

If I squeeze it, it's another tool?

No, when you squeeze it, it actually brings up this palette on your screen that you can then tap and select another feature.

And so I'm gonna try it to see how it works.

So let's wait to see how it's gonna happen.

If it works as well as I suspect it's gonna work, it's gonna be really cool.

So you've got the new squeeze feature, which is new.

You've also got the barrel roll feature that for some type of uses, and this depends upon the app, if you spin the stylus in your hand, the new version has a gyroscope inside and that spinning can do something depending upon what your app is.

Maybe change your brush, maybe do something on the screen.

There was a demo that Apple showed the other day where someone was doing a video program that as he spun the pencil, there was an object in the screen that he was sort of in real time making it spin around and stuff.

So that's a cool little feature they have.

It's got the haptic feedback so that when you double tap it, you don't have a guess of, hmm, did Apple, did my pencil understand that I just double tapped it?

Well, yes, you're gonna know it did because it's gonna have haptic feedback.

And so it'll sort of like, you know, give you a little motion much like so many other things like AirPods and stuff like that do it, and the iPhone haptic feedback's always really, really nice.

And then it also has the find my feature, which is so useful because, you know, even though the Apple pencil- - That would have helped you. - It would have helped me when I lost mine years ago when I was giving a presentation at a hotel.

And, you know, the pencil is something that's so small and tiny, it can get lost.

It can roll off, even though it's got a flat edge so it doesn't roll off the table quite as easily, it can still end up somewhere and you can't find it, and you might leave it behind if you're somewhere else.

So it's nice that it has the find my feature, even though it's really, really thin, they managed to fit it in there.

So I think people are gonna be using that all the time.

It's got some nice new features.

Now, if you don't want to have the Apple pencil pro app for every iPad, Apple is now basically selling two pencils.

They have a high-end pencil, which for the newest models is the pencil pro.

And if you wanna save 50 bucks, so instead of 129 bucks for 79 bucks, you can spend for just sort of like a lower end version.

So for the newest iPads, that's the one that you and I talked about a while ago, it's the USB-C version that you sort of pull back the top and it exposes a little USB-C charger.

So, I mean, it's just a less expensive pencil.

For me, if you're really gonna use a pencil, I mean, I know it's an extra $50, but you get so many more features with the pro that I think it's worth it.

But again, if you're much more of a casual user, you're not even sure how much you wanna have a stylus in the first place, maybe the price makes such a difference for you that you're gonna go for the low end version and just say, I don't need all the fancy features.

That's fine.

But so anyway, I think the new features of the pencil pro sound great.

I can't wait to try it next week.

And hopefully by this time next week for next episode, I'll be able to give a report and maybe you will too, Brett, depending upon if you decide to get one, but how it actually works. - Indeed.

It's interesting to me that when the iPad first came out, I was so happy with the way that I would use it with just my finger.

And today, 'cause they didn't have a stylus, they didn't support mouse, a mouse cursor, they didn't have keyboards, but today I cannot imagine now ordering my new iPad pro without getting the brand new Apple pencil pro.

Like to me, the Apple pencil just goes with the iPad and I can't imagine not having one.

It's just, you know, how far we have come in all these years.

Great.

All right, how about the bottom of the news here?

What were all the tiny quick things?

We'll just run through these real quick.

Some of the things that I just thought were interesting, you linked to a story from John Voorhees at Max Stories, which I thought was neat because first of all, I didn't even notice Tim Cook's shoes, but apparently a lot of other people did that were designed on an iPad.

He had these brand new Nike Air Maxes that apparently were like drawn and designed on an iPad.

And then he was wearing them.

And some people, I didn't know that you, it wouldn't even occur to me to zoom into the tongue of Tim Cook's shoes on a video, but that's what some people do, right? - Yeah. - And they did that.

I thought that was interesting. - Especially Nike Air Maxes, you know, unique shoes that he and only he will ever have.

So why not?

Another little detail that was interesting is that the new screen on the iPad Pro, much like the screen on the iPhone Pro can run at a lower refresh rate.

And for the iPhone, that is a huge feature because it enables standby, which I'm literally using right now as I talk to you, I'm glancing down on my iPhone, which is sitting there on a MagSafe stand, and I can see the time.

And so I love putting something on the display, even though the display itself is basically turned off.

Now, the current iPad that Apple has just announced, they have not announced any feature that takes advantage of that, but this is just some wishcasting on my part.

My hope is that Apple will bring something like the standby feature to the iPad Pro so that you'll be able to have an iPad Pro.

It'll have to be the iPad Pro new, the new one with OLED that can have the low refresh rate so that it doesn't go through the battery power quite as much.

So it'll be able to go into a mode that the screen is basically off, but it can also put a couple of things on there like the time and some widgets.

I mean, you think how big the iPad screen is, you can have all sorts of interesting widgets being displayed, maybe they're not updating, you know, every nanosecond, but they're updating once every 15 seconds, but so that it wouldn't use the screen a lot.

I would love to see that.

Apple hasn't announced anything yet.

Don't get me wrong.

This is just my wishing for the future. - Your wish. (laughs) - Yeah, because it has the screen with a lower refresh rate, it becomes a possibility that that could come out in the future.

Other things as we talk. - Yeah, here's my favorite.

Yeah, I'm just gonna real quick.

I watched this video from Marques Brownlee.

He was one of the gentlemen that were there in the New York office on hands-on first impressions.

His videos are always so fantastic.

And he always is so good about picking something out.

I love this.

In the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, it is now a 60 watt USB charging port, which we're talking about at the hinge of the Magic Keyboard.

There is a USB-C charging port.

So when I have my iPad sitting in my Magic Keyboard, I can just plug in down there and it charges as opposed to like going, you know, plugging in all the way at the very bottom of the iPad.

And the fact that they improved that a little bit, they actually flattened it, I think, when I was looking at the hinge on some of the things, maybe because they had to make it thinner for the new thinner iPad Pro, which I'm excited about.

But I just thought, I didn't pick up on that, but I'm glad that Marques did.

And it was great to see that as well. - One of the pictures I can mention. - Yeah, go ahead. - Let me pick one out.

The one that I was going to pick out is that, you know, not all chips are the same.

And so even the M4 that Apple's coming out with on the iPad, they actually have two versions of it right now that have a different number of cores.

They've got, which is like the, basically the processors and the processor.

And the reason that I mentioned to you is I personally, my two cents is I don't think it's going to make a big difference.

Apple has done this in the past where they had the same processor and at a lower price point, it had fewer cores.

And at a higher price point, it would have more.

And at least in products like the iPad and stuff like that, I don't think it has really made a big difference.

And so when I was going to buy the iPad, I bought the 512 version because that's sort of the sweet spot of space for me.

But I did think, I did think for a New York second, "Hmm, since I'm going to have this for a while, would this be the time for me to go one level up and get the one terabyte instead of the 512?"

Which I think it was a $300 price difference.

So it wasn't, it was, you know, $300.

That's like an entire magic keyboard, right?

You know, do you want to spend an extra $300 unnecessarily?

No.

And I thought about it.

And one of the things I did think about is that one of the advantages of the one terabyte is it uses the slightly better version of the M4.

I'm like, "Hmm, that's one thing."

And it also has twice as much memory.

So the new iPad has got, I think, eight gigs of memory, if I remember correctly.

Whereas it's got 16. - Right, that's right. - 16.

And you know, extra memory for an iPad, you don't need memory in an iPad the same way that you do on a computer, 'cause you don't have quite as many things open as one time.

But again, for that artificial intelligence thing that I think is coming in the future, having that extra memory might make a difference.

So I don't know.

So I did think about it.

I really did.

But then I thought back to the fact that, at least historically on things like the iPad, I don't think it makes a huge difference.

But if you decide that you're going to splurge and spend the extra money on the one terabyte or the two terabyte model, one little thing, you know, in addition to the extra space, you're going to also get the advantage of the slightly better M4 chip and the better RAM.

So it's just something to know. - Yeah, good stuff.

The saddest piece of news that you linked to today was the fact that Apple has also apparently decided to stop including Apple stickers with new products.

I love this picture that you posted here.

Apparently this is in your desk drawer. (laughing) All of the Apple stickers that you have collected over the years, I have the same thing.

In fact, I've got a little envelope.

I like to try to use them.

I've always tried to use them, but there's so many.

They usually had two or three sometimes, you know, in a package.

But now, you know, they just, every, you and I have bought so many Apple products over the years that we had this small collection.

But I'm sad to see this go.

I mean, I understand they're using it, you know, the environment and everything, and I get it.

And I'm glad that they, you know, they've got mother nature coming into the Apple, you know, campus. (laughing) Like, I remember that video, but it's like, man, that's like, I always look forward to the little stickers.

To me, it made me happy.

And it just so happened, you know, if you really wanted to save the environment, you know, get rid of all of the, you know, 89 pages of fine print, you know, documents that have to come with every device, right?

Now, obviously that's on lawyers, I guess.

It's the reason they have to have that much stuff.

But there's so much paper.

I mean, they slimmed it down 'cause they've made it like, you know, three point font.

But it's like, man, I always look forward at least to having those stickers in there.

But apparently Apple's gonna stop including stickers now in new devices.

I agree with John Gruber, you link to this, boo his. (laughing) The fun of those stickers outweighs their environmental impact.

I agree.

I wanna start, #bringbackthestickers, let's go. - Of all the things in the world that matter to the environment, you gotta think that stickers and Apple products is pretty low on the list of things that are hurting mother nature.

But I don't know, I understand where Apple's coming from, but I think I might need to report John Gruber on this one. - It hurts my Apple shaped heart.

Oh, that's terrible.

All right, two last quick things, two videos.

How would you like to approach this?

If you got a chance to watch the 37 minute presentation from Apple, we were all regaled with this lovely little video of instruments, paint cans, and I don't know what else was all in there, just completely crushed to smithereens.

Actually, they were smashed completely to a small slab of glass.

I thought it was a great premise of the video.

I enjoyed watching it, but oh my goodness, while people are a little touchy on some of these things that are coming, the video is called Crush.

It's now, you can watch it on YouTube, Jeff linked to it.

I thought it was just fun and cute, but I can see where people get a little upset about it. - Yeah, I mean, apparently some people are upset because they're concerned about, I think this is really, it's a little bit of a backlash against technology.

I think it's probably more of a backlash against artificial intelligence and stuff like that.

We're getting to the point where real musicians and real artists, in the old days, if I wanted to have a picture painted, I'm not smart enough to do that myself, I would have to hire an artist to paint a picture.

But nowadays with artificial intelligence, I could just go to Mid Journey and I can say, draw me a picture of a man in the park that's got like a dog on the side and I want it to be photo realistic, or maybe I want it to be in the style of a Pixar film.

I mean, I just can describe that and the AI will make a picture for me instantly.

And so I know that there are some people and actors are being reproduced by digital, things that look like the actor.

I know that it's a sensitive issue in the creative arts industry of at what point have the computers gone too far?

And so in that environment for Apple to be literally crushing all of the beloved instruments and things, pianos and trombones and paint cans that things have been used.

Exactly, so I can understand that the symbolism is, having said that when I saw this video, Brett, none of that occurred to me, I just thought it was a cute video. - None of it, yeah. - It was just a way to sort of show in an exaggerated sense that you have all of the capabilities that used to in the past require all of these sophisticated instruments and stuff like that are now in the power of something that's so incredibly thin.

So I mean, it never struck me the wrong way now that I've heard the critique that some people have, I don't know, I guess I get it.

I mean, if nothing else, as I put in my post, it's interesting for us all to think about that, just because you can use Logic Pro on an iPad to replace a real drum player or a real bass player with a synthetic bass or a synthetic drum, I don't think that necessarily means that you're not gonna employ real musicians when it comes time to actually record a song.

I think it's just that if you wanna sit there in your house and I'm a musician and I wanna try out some tunes, I could put something together as a demo track and I don't have to bring somebody in with a guitar, I don't have to bring somebody in with the drums 'cause I could do it all in Logic or even in GarageBand.

So I mean, I think that that's what Apple's really saying, but regardless, it was interesting to see controversy over something that, gosh, never even occurred to me at the time was gonna be controversial, so. - It seemed like, if I'm not mistaken, I think Apple included some of their own iMacs and computers in the crushing.

In fact, just looking at this little steel right here, I see this looks like the little Pixar lamp.

So it's like, you know, they weren't discriminated against the things that they wanted to crush, so they included everything.

All right, for a little bit of a happier video, I'm so glad that you linked to this. - Oh my goodness. - For anybody like myself that has once upon a time attended a Star Trek convention or a Star Wars convention or any kind of a Comic-Con or a dress up thing, you will enjoy this little video called Find Your Friends with the iPhone 15.

I just loved how, you know, just now I'm watching so many things about how the cinematography is going because I'm assuming that all of this now is being filmed on an iPhone 15.

It just is amazing to me some of the reflections that were happening and the ways that they were using the bus.

You know, it's just so cute, some of the facial expressions.

Not gonna spoil anything now, but if you like Star Wars, if you're into any kind of science fiction, you gotta watch this little video.

It's so cute and I loved it. - Yeah, and it does a great job of showing off in a real world example how you might wanna use the Find My Friends feature to actually in a crowd of people find a specific person. - Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot about that part. - Yeah, what it's all about. - Yeah, it shows you how you could use the Find My feature, but I just, I enjoyed watching the rest of the video.

Okay, I thought for the last thing, to close this out for in the know, we could each pick our favorite announcement from this past week.

And mine, as you can probably imagine, is the Magic Keyboard.

I'm so excited about having an updated keyboard.

Just the very fact that I can have that escape key like I was talking about, dedicated keys.

I'll tell you, one of the things that I'm even more excited, although now that I say it, I'm gonna say it out loud, it sounds a little ridiculous, but I love using the Dictation feature.

And on the iPad, the way that we used to engage or initiate the Dictation feature, Jeff, was I would have to bring up the on-screen keyboard and then tap the little microphone.

Now, over the years, Apple has created like a little tiny of a floating toolbar that has a microphone in it, so it wasn't as bad.

But I just gotta tell you, reaching up and trying to find, 'cause I'm typing away with my Magic Keyboard, and I'm trying to find, like I gotta stop, I gotta look at the screen, I gotta try to pull up the keyboard or the floating icon, tap the microphone and start dictating.

Now on this function row with the new Magic Keyboard, there's a dedicated Dictation button.

Even that alone makes me so excited.

I constantly use on my MacBook Pro, the pause play button, the next track, back a track, constantly use those buttons on there.

I love using the volume slider, there's three buttons.

It's F10, 11 and 12 on my MacBook Pro that I'm constantly using to like turn it up, turn it down.

I always use that.

Now I have all of that capabilities right there on the Magic Keyboard and I'm just really excited.

Plus there's a bigger trackpad.

Now, just quickly going back to something that you said earlier, it is gonna add to the weight of my iPad overall.

And I noticed that, but for me, I don't mind making that sacrifice because having the capability to have that Magic Keyboard with me at all times pays off for that.

But that's the thing I'm most excited about is the brand new Magic Keyboard.

What say you, my friend? - So picking out my favorite feature is tough because there were so many things announced this week.

I'm gonna interpret it this way, something that surprised and delighted me because some of the things I thought was coming, we thought there was gonna be an OLED screen.

We did not know it was gonna be a tandem OLED, but some of the stuff we knew, even the M4, which I think would have been a big, that would have been a big surprise, but for Mark Gurman's leaking it beforehand.

But when I think of the things that surprised me when I heard about them this week, and then as I thought about them, I'm like, gosh, this was really gonna be cool.

There's probably two of them.

One of them is the fact that the iPad is so thin, but I'm gonna reserve judgment on that until I try it.

But the other one, and again, I haven't tried it yet, but the one that you happen to be showing right now on the screen, this feature of the Apple Pencil Pro that you can squeeze it and bring up a little palette on the screen, that surprised me because it never even occurred to me that there would be a new gesture on the pencil that would actually cause something brand new to happen on the screen itself, which is bringing up this palette.

And I love the fact that as I understand it, every app developer can tweak that and have the palette do different things.

And so it means that it's a feature that can get better over time.

The developer of this, GoodNotes might wanna do this thing with it, but then PDF Expert might wanna do something else with it.

This really excites me. - Please do. - Because it's something that'll be cool in the beginning, and it'll get even more cooler over time.

And so it totally caught me by surprise.

I'm really looking forward to using it.

I love my Apple Pencil.

This is, you know, I've been thinking about this ever since the announcement, when what was it, Tuesday morning?

Ever since Tuesday morning, I've been thinking to myself, gosh, I can't wait to find out how this works, how this works out of the box, and then how it works over time as developers do stuff with it.

So I'm gonna pick that one.

That one surprised me and delights me, and I'm excited, I'm excited.

I want next Friday, looking forward to it. - But it's an exciting week, there's so much to be excited about, so much to be excited about. - I know.

I want to hear so bad next Friday.

I don't know if I'm gonna have mine by next Friday, but like the squeeze function, Jeff, does that mean, is there like, is it, am I gonna squeeze accidentally?

Is it like softer material in the middle where I would normally squeeze?

Like, that's it, like, I wanna know, and you know, sometimes I reserve my purchasing decision until I go to an Apple store, you know, after they're actually in the Apple store so I can touch it and feel it.

But you, I don't know.

I feel like I've seen enough that I wanna pull the trigger and get it and use it, and then, you know, then I could always return it, I guess, if I, but there's no way I'm gonna return it. (laughing) It's like, who's kidding?

So anyway, I'm glad that you picked that, and now I wish I almost picked that as well, because, but I just wanna know, like, how is that gonna work?

I haven't seen a whole lot of people talking about that squeeze function just quite yet.

I wanna see some more videos on stuff like that, but I'm sure it's gonna be great.

I mean, it's just amazing, 'cause as much, I mean, we're still using Apple Pencils now that are three years old, for crying out loud, or, you know, close to it, and it's like, this is just gonna be better, so.

Okay, so we will talk with you next week, 'cause I gotta go and order an iPad Pro right now. (laughing) So we'll see you later, Jeff.