260: It's Not Just a Desk

0:00:00[Music]

0:00:10From Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 260. Today's show is brought to you by Linode, Pingdom, and PDF Pen from Smile.

0:00:18My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, or I am joining, Mr. Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

0:00:23Hi, Myke Hurley. We have done this show in person, in a room together, many times now.

0:00:29I have recorded with you in a room, in the same room more than I've recorded with any of my co-hosts, I think.

0:00:34That's nice. We always manage a couple of upgrades a year, I think.

0:00:37But you have never recorded in my office. That is true. I am, for once, recording in the actual Snell Zone.

0:00:46You're definitively in the Snell Zone now. Most definitely. Although, a little bit of trivia, you know you're not the first person to do an episode of Upgrade with me here in my office.

0:00:57Okay. We had James Thompson on a couple of years ago and he was actually in my office.

0:01:02Oh, yes, he was. That was literally, he was sleeping in this room and so we woke him up and put him on Upgrade.

0:01:10That's what you can expect when you stay in the Snell Zone. Our #SnellTalk question this week comes from Ryan and Ryan wants to know, "Jason, what is your favorite summer drink?"

0:01:20This is, I was stumped when I saw this question, but I think I'm going to answer and say I don't drink a lot of iced tea, but I like iced tea in the summertime.

0:01:33A little sweet tea. It's a nice treat. You might put some lemon in there, squeeze a little lemon in there or something, but a sweet tea, I like that.

0:01:41And then another favorite is the old, as learned in England, the old lager top. You take a beer, put some lemonade on it, you can do the British lemonade, which is just 7-up.

0:01:54Or you can have the American lemonade, which is a sweet, sweet lemony drink and either one is good mixed in with a beer, a light beer.

0:02:03The first time I came to America of drinking age, American drinking age, I was in a bar and I asked for a vodka and lemonade.

0:02:14It was very confusing to everybody, both the person, the bartender, and then to me for what I was given, which was like lemon, some lemon thing with simple syrup in it to sweeten it and vodka.

0:02:33I was very confused because what I wanted was a Sprite and vodka, like a vodka and Sprite. That was what I wanted. Never have to ask in that way in England.

0:02:41See, it's the fact that you're using words that mean, they sound like other words, right? They mean something. If you had ordered like a Vadie and Lemlem, they would have been like, "Hey, speak American."

0:02:56And then you've been like, you could have explained it, but lemonade, that's a thing that we all agree on what it means, except it's not the same.

0:03:04Vadie and Lemlem. Governor.

0:03:08If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be included for a future episode of Upgrade.

0:03:16One piece of follow up this week, follow out if anything really, Relay FM Family Feud. We produced a pretty incredible, I think, episode of Connected, which was our Relay FM fifth anniversary extravaganza.

0:03:31It's episode 257 of Connected and you can go get it now if you want to and I think that you should. Jason, I would like to thank you publicly for the incredible work that you did as a game show host for our big, wonderful 20 Relay FM host game show that we put on in front of a very excited live audience.

0:03:51We have had the pleasure of putting shows on in front of many audiences. This was the audience who was the most engaged. They were going wild the whole time. It was fantastic. So yeah, people should go and listen to this because I think that it is a ton of fun.

0:04:08I guess I fulfilled my lifelong ambition of being a game show host.

0:04:12See, you were so good that I thought we would maybe only do this once. I do not feel that way anymore. I want to do it again at some point.

0:04:21Alright, we'll have to find a way to do it again.

0:04:23It was absolutely fantastic.

0:04:25I'll just point out that we have a whole round of questions from the survey. This was all driven by that survey we mentioned where we surveyed, it turns out, more than 3,000 Relay FM listeners and asked them a bunch of dumb questions and that drove the game show.

0:04:40We have some left over.

0:04:42We did spoil one.

0:04:44Yeah, we did spoil one. But maybe we will find a way to work those into some other project in the next few months.

0:04:50Life finds a way.

0:04:52Thank you, Reference Technology.

0:04:54One of the reasons I don't want to spend too much time doing follow-up and such today is because we have a lot of upstream stuff to talk about because there's a lot of things going on. A lot of it is Disney.

0:05:04Disney's conference, the number changes every year, right? If I'm remembering right, I think it was 22. I don't even know anymore. Does it change every year? Who knows?

0:05:16But Disney put on this event every year where they share a bunch of news to a bunch of their properties.

0:05:24I've got this breaking news. It's always called D23 because the company was founded in 1923. Can you imagine how big the D23 conference is going to be in 2023?

0:05:33It's going to be a pretty big one.

0:05:35Mind blowing.

0:05:37So there you go. I just assumed that it was just iterated every year. But D23?

0:05:41It's always D23.

0:05:43There is a ton of stuff. One of the big things that happened was, which has led to multiple friends of mine, I don't know if you've had this, sending me a link saying, "That's quite a lineup."

0:05:53People keep sending me this because they know we care about such things. Disney created a Disney Plus Twitter account and Instagram account because they're starting the wider promotional stuff now.

0:06:05March to November when they launch.

0:06:07And they showed off a trailer. Now the trailer is all stuff we already knew. The trailer includes all of the different things that we will have seen. So it includes clips of The Simpsons, clips of the Marvel movies, clips of the Pixar movies, all of them.

0:06:24So there's a ton of stuff. All the vault movies. And what I liked that they did was they were showing the vault movies like Aladdin, Cinderella, The Lion King, and then the modern versions of all of those movies as well.

0:06:39So this is all kind of out there. But as well as this, Disney announced a ton of new content that we didn't know about before. There's some reality content. I think Kristen Bow is like executive producing a reality TV show about people that were in their high school or earlier on in life.

0:07:02They were doing musical theater stuff and now they're coming back to it again. It's called Encore. Kind of clever. There is a world according to Jeff Goldblum.

0:07:11Yeah, there's a full trailer for that.

0:07:12And then there is some of the stuff in the properties that we're aware of. So Ewan McGregor is reprising his role as Obi-Wan for an original series, which I was very surprised to see all of that.

0:07:26Yeah, I think the story there is that they were working on an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie and when Solo didn't do well at the box office, they sort of like pulled the plug on those anthology movies.

0:07:36And it sounds like what they really did behind the scenes is say, look, we need content for Disney Plus. Why don't we use stuff like this that's in development and just turn these into essentially mini series, little short series, six hours, eight hours, who knows what.

0:07:52It's something relatively small and we can roll out and that deal is done now. And they say that they, I think they have a script and as far as we can tell, this is something that emerged from the wreckage of that movie that they were thinking of doing that they decided not to.

0:08:07But in the end, yeah, so there's going to be after The Mandalorian, you know, there's also going to be this Obi-Wan series in development that they're going to shoot next year.

0:08:15They don't have a release date, but it's going to shoot next year. So it may not even be a 2020 show, but they're multiple Star Wars series now, sort of like stacking up live action Star Wars series.

0:08:26And then on the Marvel side, they, we already knew that they were doing a whole bunch of stuff that was based on characters from the Marvel Studios MCU movies that they were spinning into live action or animated series.

0:08:39But this was their first drop of three Marvel Universe characters that we haven't seen before being done by Marvel Studios and original programs on Disney Plus, which is She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight.

0:08:54So we've been, on the incomparable, we've been joking about Moon Knight, which is if you don't know who Moon Knight is, he's kind of like Marvel's Batman.

0:09:01He's crap man.

0:09:02But he wears white and somehow it stays clean. I don't know how that happens.

0:09:06And there's, he's an interesting character actually, if you dig below that, but on a top level, he is like Marvel's Batman.

0:09:11Moon Knight is the outlier here because She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel, Marvel already have movie properties that have analogs of these characters.

0:09:21We understand what Hulk is. We know Marvel, Captain Marvel, right? Because Ms. Marvel is another iteration of...

0:09:28Sort of. Yeah, Captain Marvel is, was Ms. Marvel.

0:09:32And then they introduced, this is going to be Kamala Khan, who was introduced about, I think five years ago, written by G. Willow Wilson.

0:09:38She's a Muslim girl who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, and she idolizes Captain Marvel essentially and takes up her old name as Ms. Marvel.

0:09:46And then She-Hulk is the cousin of Bruce Banner who gets, I think, a blood transfusion from her cousin and ends up with Hulk powers, as I think the way that they did in the comics.

0:09:56And, um...

0:09:57I hope that's not the way, because that doesn't seem very logical.

0:09:59I don't know. I mean, we could argue that She-Hulk is not a great name in the modern, through modern eyes. Maybe not the best name for it.

0:10:07Moon Knight as a character is actually an interesting angle too because Moon Knight is a guy with multiple personalities.

0:10:13And so there's a sort of, like Legion, the FX series that was based on X-Men comics, it's also, or at least Moon Knight can be a discussion of mental illness issues,

0:10:27which Legion actually did, I think, a pretty good job of grappling with.

0:10:30So there's some different stories to tell in all of these worlds.

0:10:34We don't know anything more than that, that they've obviously just sort of been planning something with these characters.

0:10:40And, you know, Marvel's movie slate is so stacked up.

0:10:44It's kind of the opposite of Star Wars where they're pulling movies off and turning them into TV shows.

0:10:49With Marvel, when you look at what movies they're planning, like they don't have room for the characters and stars they already have.

0:10:56And so Disney Plus for them seems to be a really nice outlet where they can spin some stuff off that they want to do,

0:11:02but is not going to, you know, make it in the 2020s in a movie, so they might as well put it in a TV show.

0:11:09Or maybe it's a way to trial out characters they think could be good for the MCU.

0:11:14Would not surprise me at all if these characters showed up in movies down the road.

0:11:18I think that they don't want to do what they did with their last round of TV, where it was a separate thing.

0:11:23And even though they claim to be in the same universe, they never crossed over.

0:11:26This is supposedly integrated in a better way so that you could see Ms. Marvel appear in a Captain Marvel movie.

0:11:33When the Avengers assemble.

0:11:35Exactly.

0:11:36There could be way more of them in the background.

0:11:37The She-Hulk could be. Yeah.

0:11:38The app itself, there's some information about that.

0:11:42So there will be iOS and tvOS apps on day one.

0:11:46They're going to be supporting 4K. As a user, you will be able to have four simultaneous streams and seven profiles per user account.

0:11:56So, you know, this is one of those things where, let's be real, you can share your login with friends.

0:12:01Yeah. And Netflix charges you a lot more if you want 4K and many logins at once.

0:12:06So that Disney+ deal is even better now because the Disney+ pricing covers 4K with four streams.

0:12:15Yep. There's been some demos of the application to some outlets as well.

0:12:23And everyone's like, "It's nice." Right? Like, "It's clean."

0:12:25It's not in your face like Netflix is, but that also kind of makes it feel maybe it's not vibrant as Netflix does.

0:12:31But there's a lot of content there and it's available to you.

0:12:35There are plans to integrate with the Apple TV app.

0:12:40So it will be in the TV app, but will not be a channel.

0:12:43Right. So it'll know when you go to the TV app, it'll say, "Oh, you've been watching The Mandalorian and you want to watch Episode 3 now," and all of that.

0:12:51But it's not necessarily going to be sold as an Apple TV channel.

0:12:54No, Disney are going to sell it themselves. So, like, it's not going to be on any Amazon product at all, actually.

0:12:59Yeah. At least not so far.

0:13:01Uh-huh. Which is interesting.

0:13:02They've also been some launch details. So heartbreaking time for me.

0:13:07There are no -- there's no date for the UK.

0:13:11No, what's shocking is that Canada and the Netherlands, which is an interesting one, it's got to have to do with --

0:13:19With deals.

0:13:20With regulation and deals and quirks of every market.

0:13:24But Canada, who we always joke about being so late to the party in so many of these things, it goes all of these other places.

0:13:31And Canada is sort of off going, "We're right here. We're literally right next to you. Why?"

0:13:36Canada is getting Disney+ the same day as the US, November 12th. And so is the Netherlands.

0:13:44And then --

0:13:45Australia and New Zealand in November.

0:13:47Australia and New Zealand a week later. But we don't know anything about the UK.

0:13:51No, I think it's a month later that November -- oh, no, sorry, you're right. It's a week later.

0:13:55Yes, a week later. But outside of that, they're like, "Most places have been two years, so who knows?"

0:14:00I mean, there's clearly some deal probably with Sky, which is preventing them from launching and --

0:14:05Yeah.

0:14:06So it's going to be kind of funny that after all of this, who knows when I'm going to get to see it?

0:14:10I don't know if I will be able to use anybody's login from the US. It might not work.

0:14:16It's not too far to the Netherlands. Just get in a rowboat.

0:14:19But it will be the question of, is it going to be geolocked or is it just going to be account creating?

0:14:25Where you create the accounts, is that going to be locked? We just don't know what that's going to look like yet.

0:14:29So there might still be options for me if I want to get that content, which I do. But we'll see.

0:14:33Anyway, congratulations to Canada.

0:14:35Yeah, good work on you, Canada. There was a report coming from -- two different reports from two different places,

0:14:42but a lot of the information overlaps, one from Bloomberg and one from the Financial Times about Apple TV+.

0:14:47So where they overlap is that we're going to be seeing Apple TV+ launching by November for $9.99.

0:14:58Yeah, although even that, you know, it's a Bloomberg report. Mark Gurman's got good sources.

0:15:03But the hedging in these stories is amazing because it's by November, which doesn't mean --

0:15:08and there was another story that said within the next two months, which is not -- I mean, not November,

0:15:14but by November means it could be before November. And then the $9.99 is described as being --

0:15:20As Mark says, one of the multiple prices or launch strategies being considered.

0:15:26Right. So, I mean, it's so in flux. And this is often true with rumors where people point to a bad rumor

0:15:32and they say, "Oh, they got that wrong when in fact it was right at the time and then Apple changed its mind."

0:15:37This is even more dynamic than that where they're sort of like, the general feeling may be that they're probably going to price it in $9.99, but --

0:15:46This has changed none of my feelings on this. I still think nobody will be paying for it.

0:15:50Like, you will be able to pay for it for $9.99, but I just think that the majority of people that get Apple TV+

0:15:56will get it some other way. Through a bundle of some kind.

0:15:59I just genuinely think it'll be like, "You can pay $9.99, but if you're an Apple Music subscriber, you'll just get it."

0:16:05Or like, I think that there will be some -- basically, my assumption would be that the majority of people that get Apple TV+

0:16:11will not be paying directly for Apple TV+. Because this is the argument around the $9.99, right?

0:16:17So if we go on a little bit, the launch slate will include the morning show, Amazing Stories, which is the Steven Spielberg anthology.

0:16:26C, which is the most expensive TV show of all time, Jason Momoa. Truth Be Told, which I do not remember off the top of my head.

0:16:33The documentary series Home, which is, I think -- is that the one that's showing places in America?

0:16:39It's Famous People's Homes.

0:16:41That was it, yep.

0:16:42MTV Cribs.

0:16:43Or like Through the Keyhole, if that's the UK reference. And possibly some more.

0:16:48That's not a $9.99 a month service, especially as it's going to be launching around the same time as Disney+.

0:16:55No, and no catalogue to be determined.

0:16:58No catalogue.

0:16:59Although, I did hear -- I've heard from a couple of people, and I think it's just a theory, I don't think there are any sources.

0:17:03This is just sort of like from people out there who are pondering what Apple could do to sweeten this for $9.99.

0:17:09I did hear from a couple of people who said, "What if Apple threw in rentals?"

0:17:16Let's pause that. We have an Ask Upgrade question later on. We'll answer that exact theory.

0:17:20But yes, that is a possibility.

0:17:22Where Apple was cutting into its own margins just to make this seem more valuable by saying, "And you get four iTunes rentals a month," or something like that.

0:17:30I still think that doesn't make it a service that people are going to pay $9.99 a month for.

0:17:34Yeah, it's a hard thing. That's why I think it's one of multiple prices/launch strategies being considered to quote Mark Gurman.

0:17:42And I know the argument of why would they do this for services revenue if nobody's going to pay for it.

0:17:47But you've got to understand that no one's going to pay for it one way or another.

0:17:52Right, and it's a long game.

0:17:54It's a long game.

0:17:55They're going to build up their library. They're going to do what Disney is also going to do, because $6.99 isn't going to stay there.

0:18:01They will slowly crank it up.

0:18:03So one way to view it is essentially give it, piggyback it on other stuff now when you're starting out, and become indispensable.

0:18:12Yes, but you get it to a point where… So like services revenue's growing anyway.

0:18:18You can also say, "Oh, we now have X amount of millions of subscribers to Apple TV+, and then over time, the balance starts to shift, and people sign up for X bundle because of Apple TV+, not because of Apple Arcade or whatever."

0:18:32That's how I still envision this going, because Apple, a lot of the time, we know this, right, they can be blind to pricing.

0:18:40But you've got to assume that they're not right now, because their revenue situation is changing in many ways.

0:18:46And two, they know this isn't a good deal at $9.99 a month.

0:18:49Like, they're not oblivious. This is not a good deal.

0:18:52Now, I'm sure that there will be a free trial period where they'll hope that they will be able to convince people based on the content.

0:18:59But even if the content's really good in a free trial period, you can knock all their content out in three days, right?

0:19:06Like, even if they do start rolling out, which I still think that they will do, especially if it's a free trial period, it won't be everything all at once.

0:19:13They might like dulse them out week by week.

0:19:15But yeah, we will have a lot more to say about this, but personally, I don't think that this doesn't change.

0:19:22This report doesn't change how I feel the pricing is going to go initially.

0:19:25Yeah, and it is a shaky report. I don't doubt that these thoughts are happening inside Apple, but they don't even have the confidence to say this is what it will be.

0:19:35It's sort of like, "Oh, by then, maybe for this." And we don't really know.

0:19:39But I agree with you. I wouldn't put it past Apple to just come out and say flatly, "It's $9.99 and this is what you get."

0:19:47But then it would be in one of these categories of Apple misjudging, I think, because I think it'll be a kind of a disaster for them.

0:19:54Yeah, if they do it, they've made a mistake. And I would like to believe that they're paying more attention than this.

0:20:00Because you're seeing daily, I mean, people aren't going to do it, but you're seeing the rhetoric right now, "I'm going to cancel my Netflix subscription when Disney+ launches."

0:20:10I understand what people are saying when they say that. It's like, "I only want so many streaming services in my life and Disney+ looks like a great deal."

0:20:17But the content isn't the same. If you enjoy Netflix TV shows, you're not going to get those on Disney+.

0:20:24So canceling your Netflix, you will be losing something. And if you're happy to lose something because all you want is a streaming service in your life,

0:20:31then yeah, Disney+ on paper could be a better deal. But $9.99 a month for maybe six TV shows.

0:20:39And there's maybe two of them you actually will care about.

0:20:42Yeah, harder to say.

0:20:44Alright, today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Smile.

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0:22:05Our thanks to PDFPen and Smile for their support of this show and Relay FM.

0:22:10So talking of Bloomberg and Mark Gurman, there was a big report wrapping up a bunch of stuff about the 2019 product releases.

0:22:21Some stuff we already knew. Some there's new details about, but I thought would be worthwhile going through to just kind of maybe tie up some loose ends.

0:22:29Because again, it's like I say, we know a lot of this stuff or we've heard a lot of this stuff.

0:22:34But as is usual, we look to Mark Gurman and Bloomberg these days as a way to, especially just before an event is like just on the horizon,

0:22:44or maybe just a couple of weeks away, as a way to be like, all right, this is what we're going to be expecting now then.

0:22:50Let's weed out the things one way or another as we're leading up to the event.

0:22:54And so there are iPhone details, iPad details, which I wasn't expecting, and some Mac stuff as well.

0:23:01So the 2019 iPhones, three new phones. You know, we were talking about this last week, what the name is will be.

0:23:09And Mark is saying pro for the two higher end models. No details about the naming for the 10R successor.

0:23:18I know that you just wrote a big thing about that on Tom's guide as well.

0:23:22Right, right. The idea of maybe the 10R is the 11 and the 10S successors are the 11 Pro.

0:23:30And I feel like if they, you know, if it is going to be pro then that's going to be it.

0:23:35Because if you've got two phones called the Pro, then what's the not pro? Well, it's the regular one.

0:23:40And then the regular phone is now the 10R. And that's going to be an interesting thing to unpack.

0:23:45Because this report from Mark Gurman is very heavy on details for what the quote unquote high end phones are going to have in them.

0:23:55Right. But so if you reimagine the 11, right, basically the only things that I could weed out from this report is a faster processor, the addition of a second camera.

0:24:05Second camera, yeah.

0:24:06And boosted AR capabilities from some additional sensors on the camera module.

0:24:11That's not big. I mean, if you're saying this is the iPhone 11, this is where the line begins.

0:24:18There's even less there because if we're comparing, let's imagine, right, you're going from 10S to 11.

0:24:26Right.

0:24:27The iPhone 10S to the iPhone 11 will have a faster processor and maybe different colors.

0:24:32Right. Because the camera will be although the argument there is that they can say our base model iPhone 11 has real portrait mode, two cameras, which is which the 10R doesn't have.

0:24:45Well, sure.

0:24:46And it's and it and let's say the iPhone starts at 749, which is useful for Apple.

0:24:52It's not what the iPhone used to start at.

0:24:54But it's not 999.

0:24:55A bigger screen.

0:24:56And it has the bigger screen.

0:24:57It has the worse screen, but you don't have to talk about that.

0:24:59You don't have to talk about that. And a bigger screen, you know, for definitely not for everyone.

0:25:04But I think what the phone market has showed us is that the bigger screen is a net positive.

0:25:10Yes.

0:25:11People like big screens.

0:25:12Not everybody, but like the market likes big screens.

0:25:15They're they're more popular.

0:25:17It is a little weird that if you want a smaller screen, you have to spend more money.

0:25:20But that's where we are.

0:25:21Yeah, that isn't how everybody's doing it now.

0:25:24But that is how Apple will be doing it for the time being.

0:25:27For the time being.

0:25:28Until there's an iPhone 11 mini.

0:25:32Shuffle.

0:25:34The two pro models replace the XS and the XS Max.

0:25:39So we'll go with 11 Pro and.

0:25:43I'm hopeful for 11 Pro with sizes just like the iPad and MacBooks.

0:25:51Let's hope so.

0:25:52Where you just there's no 11 Pro Max or anything like that.

0:25:56There's just the whatever the the screen diagonals are for those two.

0:26:00And that's it.

0:26:01But just call them that.

0:26:02The big one and the little one.

0:26:03That would be the big one, little one.

0:26:05Or like little buddy will be.

0:26:07They'll be rounded in the way that they are.

0:26:10New camera system.

0:26:11The lens for ultra wide photography.

0:26:14Excellent.

0:26:15That's what I wanted. I wanted an ultra wide camera.

0:26:17I think they look great on the Android phones that have them.

0:26:20I want to have that ability.

0:26:22It sounds like they're doing software, which is not surprising for Apple at all, that they're going to do some software to kind of intelligently sort of like with the two cameras now, whereas you zoom it's flipping from one camera to the other and you don't see that they're going to be able to do this intelligence sort of capturing on all the cameras.

0:26:38And you would the suggestion that Mark Gurman makes is that if you didn't get somebody in the frame.

0:26:46It's actually got that wide angle shot behind it and you can essentially kind of like crop beyond the edges of your frame in order to get the other people.

0:26:57That was a thing from a while ago and there was a report from Mark Gurman from 9 to 5 Mac.

0:27:02I forget which one said that like that data will be saved on device for just a period of time and then it's removed.

0:27:08Right.

0:27:09You're not taking three pictures every time you do this, but you've got some small period of time where you look at that selfie or you look at that group shot and you go, "Oh, I missed this thing off the edge."

0:27:20And you can actually sort of like crop back.

0:27:22I actually think that's not even a space thing.

0:27:24It is a privacy thing.

0:27:28So like you've taken a photo which you've framed.

0:27:31You know what the frame is, right?

0:27:32No, you're right. You're right.

0:27:33And then there's stuff outside the frame that you assume is not captured.

0:27:36You may be not wanting specifically to be captured, right?

0:27:39Yes, that's right.

0:27:40So like keeping that there the whole time.

0:27:41When you're in your evidence dungeon, you don't want the incriminating evidence that's off to the side.

0:27:47The blinking box in the corner. You don't want that one in the frame.

0:27:50No.

0:27:51And I want to read some quotes because this is some additional stuff which I think is interesting.

0:27:56So, "The new system will also take higher resolution pictures rivaling some traditional cameras and photos taken in very low light environments will improve too."

0:28:05That's night mode.

0:28:06It is night mode.

0:28:07That's what that is.

0:28:08It is incredibly, incredibly important that Apple shows off significantly approved low light photography.

0:28:13Because this is the one area that they are getting destroyed on.

0:28:17Absolutely. My Google Pixel 1 destroys the iPhone in low light.

0:28:24So this would be a situation I guess where they're using all three lenses and some software in the hopes that they can have at least comparable shots to some of the other camera systems.

0:28:35And this is one that was new to me.

0:28:37"Significantly upgraded video recording capabilities."

0:28:41Getting them also closer to professional video cameras.

0:28:44What does that mean?

0:28:45I don't know.

0:28:46"Apple has developed a feature that allows users to retouch, apply effects, alter colors, reframe and crop video as it is being recorded live on the device."

0:28:55I don't know what all of that would look like and why you would be doing that.

0:29:00Will they put clips inside the camera app?

0:29:02I mean, yeah. I guess that's what it is.

0:29:04But when I see both of those things from a software perspective.

0:29:08Alright, this is how they demo.

0:29:09This is the demo.

0:29:10Sure.

0:29:11Right.

0:29:12You know, like, "Oh, here, watch us.

0:29:13Oh, look, let's take a picture of Tim.

0:29:15Oh, Tim's arms cut out.

0:29:16Oh, Tim's arms back."

0:29:17Right?

0:29:18And then there's, you know, like a whole thing where someone's doing a skateboarding video and it's like, "Oh, and then we're putting a bunch of filters on the video and you can see how it affects."

0:29:27And never get, you know, like, I don't know.

0:29:30Yeah, I don't know either.

0:29:31That's, I mean, it sounds like something very similar to what we see in the camera app where you have the ability to zoom in and out and maybe they've built a bunch of moves for video that smooth all of that out so that you, you know, you zoom out and you apply a color effect or whatever and it all just sort of continues smoothly instead of being abrupt.

0:29:57Yep.

0:29:58So it seems more professional.

0:29:59I don't know.

0:30:00Yeah.

0:30:01There's some of that stuff like cropping.

0:30:02I get it.

0:30:03Reframing, fine.

0:30:04But like, do people want effects and colors in line in the video that's been, we'll find out.

0:30:10I guess so.

0:30:11We'll find out.

0:30:12Reverse wireless charging, which is a phrase that I love.

0:30:15It's like, "Your phone powers your home via," no, this is like charging your AirPods, charging that kind of stuff with the phone, which is a great thing to have.

0:30:23It's fine.

0:30:24It's fine.

0:30:25You see the, what is it, Samsung ads that show that and where there's like somebody whose battery is almost dead and there's a nice person they don't know who's there who taps that.

0:30:34And you know, the truth is that for that phone to recharge would take forever.

0:30:38This is good for portable devices, not for phones.

0:30:41Like, you know, you would charge your watch or your AirPods.

0:30:44Yeah.

0:30:45Yeah.

0:30:46In a pinch, you could charge your AirPods off of your phone battery.

0:30:48That's okay.

0:30:49Some of the colorways for at least the Pro models, I couldn't work out whether this also meant the 11, but I expect so.

0:30:56We'll have matte finishes rather than glossy finishes.

0:31:00Give people the option.

0:31:03Somebody sent out a link the other day to the 6 Color Apple logo and said, "So, six iPhones in six colors."

0:31:11And I thought, "Oh, that would be really pretty."

0:31:14I would like that, but I don't see that happening.

0:31:16Because I think that at least the Pro phones will have what is considered to be more traditional Pro-looking colors,

0:31:24or like high-end colors, which are gold, silver, gray.

0:31:29And I don't expect that to change.

0:31:32I would like to see color, but I just don't see it happening.

0:31:35Multi-angle Face ID sensor.

0:31:38Now, I think this is the iPad's Face ID sensor because it references a wider field of view, so it could be flat on the desk,

0:31:49which the iPad can do in a way that the iPhone cannot.

0:31:52Multi-angle, I'd also expect landscape.

0:31:54So really, I expect whatever they've done for the iPad to come to the iPhone.

0:31:59Right.

0:32:00So that will be better.

0:32:01That's a big feature that in some ways that could be the single biggest improvement in usability on this device.

0:32:08And you would notice it every single day.

0:32:10Yeah.

0:32:11If it unlocks faster and it unlocks on your desk when you're close enough to flip up with your finger,

0:32:17but not close enough to be directly hovering over the camera and have it know that it's you and unlock, that's good.

0:32:25That's really good.

0:32:26Better water resistance.

0:32:27It's not really a feature people ask for, but it's great to have it.

0:32:30So for me, it's all about Apple's policy because Apple has gone.

0:32:33So this story says, oh, now it's going to be rated for more than 30 minutes or whatever it is.

0:32:38But we know people, multiple people who have had their phone die because it was in water.

0:32:45And the truth is that Apple talks about water and dust resistance, but Apple's warranty does not cover water damage.

0:32:52So they make all these claims about water resistance, but only the Apple Watch is actually covered to be submerged.

0:33:03The rest of it, you know, this is the story about how Serenity Caldwell a couple of years ago jumped in the pool with her then boyfriend,

0:33:10now husband's iPhone to take some pictures in a swimming pool and she killed it.

0:33:16And when she took it to Apple, they're like, yeah, there's water damage.

0:33:18It's not covered.

0:33:19So when I look at better water resistance, I keep thinking, well, this is great Apple,

0:33:23but when is the water resistance in the iPhone going to be strong enough that you'll back it with a warranty?

0:33:30Because until then, I consider it irrelevant.

0:33:33It's basically splash resistance and what what they're really saying is don't submerge your phone on purpose.

0:33:40But if you drop your phone in the toilet and it stays functional, then great, which I would like them to say, no,

0:33:47if you submerge your iPhone, it's fine.

0:33:49I want that confidence because I think they mislead people into thinking that it's okay when it's not.

0:33:54Yeah, Apple never, like some companies, they never demo their water resistance.

0:33:59They don't make advertising out of their water resistance.

0:34:01No, you're not supposed to do it other than the Apple Watch.

0:34:04Because Samsung, they demo their water resistance in advertising.

0:34:11I guess the Apple Watch is nothing they can do.

0:34:13So if you if you create swimming workout types, you are encouraging it.

0:34:17No, it's built to be in the water and that's fine.

0:34:20It's like you're supposed to put your Apple Watch on the side and just shout every time you do a lap.

0:34:24And like, when I went to Hawaii, I got my iPhone 10s wet and it was fine.

0:34:30But I also was aware that if it wasn't fine, it was going to be my fault.

0:34:35If I want to listen to podcasts in the shower, which I do, my phone comes into the shower cubicle with me.

0:34:40I got over that and that's what I do now.

0:34:42And there's a difference between getting water on and being immersed in, right?

0:34:45Because the immersion, there's pressure on all sides.

0:34:47It's going to find whatever pathway it can into your hardware unless it's truly, you know, waterproof.

0:34:53But in the shower, just getting splashed on is less of an issue.

0:34:58But still, if they found water damage, they would blame you.

0:35:01So what I'm saying is, I hope that as we take this path toward better water resistance on iPhones,

0:35:06that at some point Apple will have the confidence to say,

0:35:09"Yes, you can put your iPhone in water now and it's okay."

0:35:12No 3D touch.

0:35:14Here we are.

0:35:16I need to wait and see.

0:35:17This is one where it's like I'm operating a wait and see approach to how I feel about this.

0:35:22Because I am a fan of 3D touch, but if haptic touch gets to the point where like I don't need 3D touch,

0:35:27and I don't care about 3D touch, I want the functionality, not the actual use of it.

0:35:31Do you think they've done anything to haptic touch that they didn't put in the XR?

0:35:35I mean, the XR is sort of like fake 3D touch, but only for some things.

0:35:38Well, the iPad has all this stuff now, right?

0:35:41So you can long press on a link and it pops up a little menu and you get a preview.

0:35:46So as long as all of the functionality is replaced by haptic touch, which wasn't the case with XR, then great.

0:35:54I have yet to put... I haven't put 13 on an iPhone.

0:36:00So I don't know what it looks like.

0:36:02But what I do know is that on my iPad, I now have all of the functionality that I would want, really.

0:36:07So, more so, in fact, like I like that you get the little full preview now, which is not a thing that you got with 3D touch.

0:36:14So as long as I get what I want with the iPhone...

0:36:17And it's kind of what I asked for, you know, way back when, which is 3D touch, especially since it's not on all devices,

0:36:24how do you find a common gesture? And the answer is obviously tap and hold is the answer there.

0:36:30Now, I'm going to channel my inner Jon Gruber here and point out that the difference is that you don't have to hold for a 3D touch.

0:36:36You just push and it's instant. And the problem with tap and hold is you have to wait and that slows you down.

0:36:42And it's not great. But the problem is, I think, that the 3D touch...

0:36:47The impression I get is that 3D touch on phones was expensive because it limited their design reach

0:36:54because of how they had to do it with pressure sensors and they couldn't bring it to other iOS devices.

0:36:59So they got in this position where they then have to generate equivalents for the iPad.

0:37:07And at that point, what are we doing here?

0:37:11I didn't know. I never tried it before. But you can do peak and pop on messages on iPad now.

0:37:16I'd never thought to try it until now because I could never do it before.

0:37:19So I never even thought it was a possibility. You just touch and hold in the message list and a little message window pops up.

0:37:24So that seems like the jig is up for 3D touch.

0:37:28And the same as an iPhone, which continues to be my top tip.

0:37:31You can press and hold on a message and you can read the message, but it doesn't show the message as read in read receipts.

0:37:39There is the Myke Hardy top tip again and now it applies to the iPad as well.

0:37:42Nice. You know, I have a Magic Trackpad 2 here which has Force Touch and I never use it.

0:37:48I guess what we've learned is that that's not a feature that's discoverable enough for it to be something that you can rely on.

0:37:59Yeah, I think really I think that the Force Touch, 3D Touch, Aptic Touch, whatever.

0:38:05I think it only really makes sense to people when they're directly manipulating the screen.

0:38:10I think it doesn't work with a mouse pointer.

0:38:13I don't think that that on a trackpad when you're the kind of disconnect, I don't think that it works out for most people.

0:38:21Yeah.

0:38:22So that's the iPhone. The 2019 Apple Watch, new cases.

0:38:26So we knew about this already, right? Like titanium and ceramic.

0:38:30Right.

0:38:31And a focus on software. No other big changes.

0:38:35Yeah. After our conversation last week, I wrote a whole Macworld column about this.

0:38:40And, you know, there may be an Apple Watch Series 5.

0:38:45I'll be interested to see what they say about it and if it's anything particularly notable.

0:38:51There may not be. There may be, in fact, even somebody suggested this to me on Twitter and I wouldn't put it past Apple to do a stealth update where the Series 4 gets is slightly different.

0:39:07But they just don't brand it as Series 5 because there's no evidence in any rumors or reporting or anything that there's enough of a hardware difference for them to actually call this Apple Watch Series 5.

0:39:21But they did register some new models on the like the Russian EEC Trade Bureau thing that they do.

0:39:32Like, so I'm kind of fascinated that we're this close to an Apple event and the status of the Apple Watch is still a mystery.

0:39:39But but my Macworld column just followed up on what we were talking about last week, which is there's so much to be gained in their in their software development and in making independent watch apps and making it better for developers to develop better watch apps that like that.

0:39:55That's where they really need to push with the Apple Watch if they took six months or a year off from a new piece of hardware and just vary the materials like they vary the watch bands.

0:40:03I think they'd be OK. They can and maybe will do a Series 5 watch, but they don't have to.

0:40:08That's it's interesting for them to be in that position.

0:40:12New processes and camera upgrades for the iPad Pro.

0:40:16Yeah, and probably not in September, right?

0:40:19Presumably I would coming before the end of the year.

0:40:22Yeah, presumably because this wasn't just about this event. So I would imagine that some of these other things are going to be either not an event or that there will be an October event.

0:40:31But I'm I don't know, moderately surprised that there's a hardware update to the iPad Pro a year later.

0:40:37But if they are boasting about how great that processor is, this gets they get to push the processor forward here and the cameras.

0:40:46Yeah, and a new 10.2 inch low end iPad.

0:40:51So this is the regular iPad will become 10.2 inches.

0:40:55I don't know how that's going to look. I don't know if it will have a home button or it won't have face ID for sure.

0:41:02I would assume you think, but they would do the bezel reduction thing.

0:41:06I don't know. It's fascinating to see how they because they already we have the iPad Air back and now they're going to do a change to the low end iPad.

0:41:15I don't know. It's it's weird. It's weird.

0:41:18But this will, as Mark pointed out in his article, after a decade, there will no longer be a 9.7 inch screen.

0:41:25Yeah, it's a big moment if it if it comes to place that the that the original iPad size is gone.

0:41:33Like it's completely unknown what that is. It might be an old iPad design.

0:41:37It might be a brand new iPad design. We don't know. But those are two things I wasn't necessarily expecting this year to be on.

0:41:46I definitely wasn't expecting any changes to the iPad Pro this year.

0:41:49I think I've told people that we told people that as much in the NARS upgrade segments.

0:41:54But if you have bought an iPad, I wouldn't worry.

0:41:58No, it will be you know, it's got the next processor in it and I doubt it will have much, you know, if it has two cameras on the back.

0:42:06Great. The processor as well. It's like there's so much headroom on these devices as it is right now.

0:42:10I wouldn't be concerned. 2019 Mac lineup. So Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR still on track for this year.

0:42:18Good to know. I don't think that there was any argument on that, but but good to know.

0:42:22And Gorman does not mention any other desktop Macs.

0:42:28So I'm as I mentioned last week, I was going to I am when I get home, I'm going to I'm going to be getting my Mac Pro.

0:42:35Now that I feel vindicated in that and we're going to be looking at potentially seeing the 16 inch MacBook Pro as hoped for.

0:42:46Yes. Long, long rumored. And there was that confusing set of rumors where it sounded like, is it this year? Is it next year?

0:42:52And Gorman says, no, that's this year. That 16 inch MacBook Pro.

0:42:55So I can envision an October event. Who knows where it will be?

0:42:59Where in the world is the October Apple event with the that what we did last year in Brooklyn, which is iPad Pro and new Mac hardware with the iPad.

0:43:11And maybe that's the official Mac Pro. The 10 inch iPad, 16 inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro now available.

0:43:21That's an October event. Sounds like that to me. Because September will also include Apple Arcade.

0:43:29Yeah. Apple TV Plus. Yeah. Some other software stuff, probably recap of iOS recap of iPad OS.

0:43:37Yeah. And they'll pitch that as the as the pro event come October. I think that's probably the most likely. Yeah.

0:43:44And also, I mean, there is the whole question which could throw all sorts of stuff like when is the software coming out?

0:43:51It might not be. It might not be when we expect.

0:43:54Yeah. I mean, the betas for me, while usable, still feel shockingly not ready to ship.

0:44:03And they're still churning them out, though.

0:44:05They are. I mean, I like that, that they're they're working on them. But for iOS 13 to be, you know, maybe more like three or four weeks away.

0:44:16I just I don't know. I don't know if I were Apple. I would just uncouple this stuff from the hardware ship and ship it later.

0:44:23But we'll see what they do. It just feels like the stuff.

0:44:27But like, what about the whole third camera?

0:44:31Right. Right. What if the third camera is?

0:44:34I can only use two of them. Like, they have to find a way to make it work.

0:44:38Yeah. Maybe they can. And as we spoke about before, they should always have the backup plan of that new hardware can somehow work in the old software.

0:44:46Remember when the portrait mode came out and it was in beta?

0:44:49Uh huh. Wouldn't surprise me if that's what they do as their backup. Their fallback plan is iOS 12 something.

0:44:55And on those particular phone models, there is a beta mode that is essentially like a beta version of the camera app from iOS 13.

0:45:05And you're stuck with that for a month until iOS 13 ships.

0:45:11It wouldn't bother me as long as I can use the features that are in my new fancy $1000 phone.

0:45:15Yes, indeed.

0:45:16Because it would. And I can't imagine that Apple would do it any other way.

0:45:20I cannot imagine them saying, like, "Alright, buy the phone in September and then sometime in October, that third lens will work."

0:45:26You can use your third camera. Yeah. Probably not.

0:45:29And there were some other products mentioned. I'm not sure if these are 2019 or not, but cheaper HomePod with two tweeters instead of...

0:45:39Seven.

0:45:40Seven. Great.

0:45:41Great. Cheaper HomePod.

0:45:42Smaller, I would expect too, then.

0:45:44Yeah. Go for it. Smaller, cheaper, better price, more likely to sell them.

0:45:48It should be called a battery, I think.

0:45:50Oh, interesting.

0:45:51Why not? Have it in the back garden.

0:45:53If it's smaller, I don't know why you'd want to necessarily...

0:45:57We'll say. And water-resistant AirPods with noise cancellation.

0:46:01Still in the works.

0:46:02Still in the works.

0:46:04Where are those HeadPods, Jason?

0:46:06I don't know.

0:46:07That's what I want.

0:46:08I'm intrigued for an Apple-branded version, some pro headphones.

0:46:15I would be interested to see what they look like.

0:46:17And this is mostly just because I want to buy some nice wireless headphones, but I'm refusing to do it for as long as this rumor is potentially still around.

0:46:27I think that's probably smart.

0:46:29Because I'm not necessarily that interested in what's available from above.

0:46:34But noise cancellation in AirPods, I'm really intrigued to see what that would look like.

0:46:40I think there are some Sony in here things right now that have noise cancellation.

0:46:46Yeah.

0:46:47Which people seem excited about.

0:46:49Yeah, because mostly if you're sticking something in your ears, the cancellation, and not over your ears, the cancellation is not the thing.

0:46:55It's reduction. You're blocking the outside sound from coming into your ears.

0:46:59So with this, it sounds like they're still trying to...

0:47:02You've got to have a microphone.

0:47:04Which they already do.

0:47:05Right, but a microphone good enough to detect those things and then do some inversion and have it sound good.

0:47:11Yeah.

0:47:12Because if my memory serves, the AirPods are doing something already with that, right?

0:47:17Where they're listening, when you're on a phone call, the microphones are picking up noise.

0:47:22Oh right, right, to reduce the noise.

0:47:24And trying to reduce the noise.

0:47:25Sure.

0:47:26And I know that it's a big jump from that to noise cancellation, but you know, there's stuff already happening in those.

0:47:32They're working on it.

0:47:33So that's kind of where we are.

0:47:34I mean, my hope is we're drafting next week, but...

0:47:37I hope so. We'll have to hear this week to know whether that draft is happening next week.

0:47:43But I hope it is.

0:47:45All right, today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom.

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0:48:55So as I am sitting here right now with my colleague and co-host Mr. Jason Snell, with the time being as it is, which is late August, early September of 2019, we are both celebrating five years of a bunch of things.

0:49:15It's true.

0:49:16So we had Relay FM's five year anniversary, but it's also coming up in like two weeks?

0:49:24Yeah.

0:49:25The five year anniversary of Six Colors and UPGRADE.

0:49:28Your self-employment.

0:49:29Yes.

0:49:30I'm five years self-employed in about two months time.

0:49:33Uh huh.

0:49:34It's a big time for us.

0:49:36Yeah, I wanted to talk about it and I wanted to do it before, because the thing is, my...

0:49:41This is the last time we may get to talk about this before everything starts to go wild for the next couple of months.

0:49:46My Six Colors anniversary was the day the iPhone shipped.

0:49:51That's when I started the site, because I had an iPhone review.

0:49:55Yeah.

0:49:56And the, you know...

0:49:58That was also the first day of UPGRADE too.

0:50:00Yeah, exactly. The same day.

0:50:01And then the IDG layoffs were all literally the day after that event, that September event, when they introduced the Apple Watch but didn't ship it and then the new iPhones.

0:50:14So it's all five years ago. And so I wanted to talk about it now because we are going to be very, very busy with, you know, the stuff from Apple, whatever it is, in the next couple of months.

0:50:27It's kind of our busiest time of year in a lot of ways. This rolling into the holidays with new Apple products thing.

0:50:32So, you know, I thought you have done...

0:50:36There's a great episode of Analog where you and Casey talk about this.

0:50:39There is a great episode of Connected where you and Steven did the relay Q&A for the fifth anniversary and you talk about a lot of the aspects of the business.

0:50:48But I did want... I've been thinking about this because it's been five years for me coming up too and five years for us doing this show and they're all together and five years for relay and it's all kind of connected.

0:50:59And so I thought it was worth at least mentioning that I have had as a part of this process and thinking about the relay fifth anniversary, it gave me some realization about...

0:51:12I don't know how to describe it, about what we do and the fact that I never expected it to be temporary at all.

0:51:22But there's some hedging you do when you're starting out doing something new of like, "Well, we'll see how this goes."

0:51:29And then what ends up happening, I've found, is that sometimes you hedge and, "Well, we'll see how this goes."

0:51:36And then you turn around and five years have passed and you haven't actually gone off of some of those assumptions of, "I did this temporarily."

0:51:45And so you and I are sitting here across a desk. This is my new desk that I just bought.

0:51:53Jason has been very excited about this new desk. It's a very nice new desk, but it's been funny to see him talking about it to me over the last week.

0:52:00But the realization of it really was, and this is why I'm kind of excited more than... It's not just a desk, it's that the other desk that's off to Myke's left because I got desks everywhere in this office right now.

0:52:12That was bought in November of 2013 for me to set up my home office, which was also a little bit of a hedge about me going out on my own because I was unhappy with my job and I was thinking of quitting.

0:52:26And even though I didn't for another almost year, I was getting ready and also just trying to create a workspace for myself in my house because I didn't have a home office.

0:52:36I was using a laptop on the bed or on a couch. And so I bought that desk, this little desk as a hedge, as a temporary thing.

0:52:47And you turn around and it's been five and a half years since I've been using that desk.

0:52:51And Lauren and I had this conversation about how a lot of my assumptions about my workspace, and I think probably beyond that too, but the workspace is a great example.

0:53:01I made in 2013, 2014 as temporary decisions to let's see how it goes.

0:53:07And then you turn around and realize, "Oh, I've been using kind of a lousy desk for five years. This shows no sign of ending, right?

0:53:16I should probably actually have a better workspace than I do." But it made me laugh because it was a time when none of us really were sure about what we were going to be doing.

0:53:29And then you turn around and then five years have passed.

0:53:32You saying November 2013 was just a funny thing to me because I remember, because that was around, I mean, I don't remember exactly when it was, but there was that all that we were at together, which was the first time me and you had ever sat down together.

0:53:46And it was probably around that time of year.

0:53:47That was probably October, November 2013.

0:53:49Because that was when we had a breakfast and you were talking about your desire to go out on your own.

0:53:57Yeah.

0:53:58And I was talking about my desire to go out on my own.

0:54:01And we were both encouraging each other over that breakfast to do it.

0:54:06And it was just kind of like a funny thing to think about as we were both clearly very much going through all of that then and then to see where we are now six years later.

0:54:17It's just like a funny thought.

0:54:19But I agree with you. I am a little bit more reflective in this way. I think about this stuff frequently.

0:54:29But there are still a bunch of things, and as I'm thinking about what I want to do next year, I'm thinking about getting some time back.

0:54:36Because I've had some work changes in the last year.

0:54:38I've got some different things that I want to be able to put my time into that weren't options for me even six months ago.

0:54:45And I want to see where they could take me now.

0:54:48And I think that it's really important to be able to challenge those assumptions.

0:54:52But talking about desk stuff, my office that I've been in for two years, it needs to be completely ripped out and started again.

0:55:00Because I had a very different idea of what I wanted to be doing in that space to what I'm actually doing in it now.

0:55:06Right.

0:55:07I had a couch in it and a PlayStation. Now there's no couch and no PlayStation.

0:55:10But my office is still built around this idea of how to play video games in there, but I don't. I played them in the front room on the HDR TV rather than this 25, 30 inch or whatever TV I have that I've had for a while.

0:55:23So things change. But I did want to ask you though about that, irrespective of your wonderful desk.

0:55:31It's right here. I can hear you. It's right here.

0:55:35It's a very nice desk. People want to know the desk, by the way, so you should tell them the desk.

0:55:39Okay.

0:55:40All right.

0:55:41Is the Wirecutter desk right?

0:55:42It's the Wirecutter desk. It's right on the side. It's written there. You can actually read the name.

0:55:46Uplift desk.

0:55:47It's the Uplift desk. I didn't get the bamboo. It's the Uplift V2.

0:55:51I didn't get the bamboo top, which is the standard. I actually got the reclaimed Douglas fir.

0:55:57That's an old piece of wood. It's great. Looks great. Love it.

0:56:00But are you where you thought you would be?

0:56:04No.

0:56:05Okay.

0:56:06No, not at all. And it's funny. One of the things that took a while, and you can listen to those first 49 episodes of Free Agents to hear me talk about it in detail with David Sparks, but I spent the first couple of years, and I don't know about you.

0:56:24Every day was like a, "How's it going? Is it still working? What's my runway? How much time do I give myself to do this? Am I worried about this?"

0:56:33And what I found is that it took a couple of years for that to fade into the background where it just sort of, not that it isn't still there and not that you don't have to be paying attention and not that there are difficult situations you have to deal with, but that you integrate it into yourself.

0:56:49It's like, it's a part. This is part of who I am is that I do this. And for the first year or two, I was like, I had to process it every day that this is what I was doing, and I don't have to do that now.

0:57:00So in one way, it's very different in terms of where we thought we would be like, for me, I didn't count on the podcasting being as big a part of my overall business and salary as it's turned out to be.

0:57:19And that's good because I did count on blogging, basically, and Six Colors being a much larger part of my finances than it's turned out to be because, and this little insider baseball here, but I sold a weekly sponsorship on Six Colors for the first year and a half or so that I did it.

0:57:42And since then, I could probably count the number of weeks I've sold on my two hands, like the blog sponsorship thing.

0:57:54And you know, John Gruber, who is still wildly successful at this, even he has open weeks and has to drum up sponsorships and he does it and he still makes good money from Daring Fireball, I assume.

0:58:06But even the best case scenario, I would say Daring Fireball is that has signs of a struggle.

0:58:14And for me, and I remember talking to Jim Dalrymple from The Loop about this at a WWDC a couple of years ago, and he experienced some similar things.

0:58:22It's like, for me, if I had been relying on advertising on a blog to pay my bills, I would not be independent anymore because that all pretty much stopped about two years in.

0:58:34But it was okay. I was relying on like six different things to pay my bills. And while the blog stuff went down, podcast stuff went up. And so it all worked out.

0:58:44I think there's actually a direct correlation between the two things.

0:58:46Probably so.

0:58:47I think it's...

0:58:48I occasionally get emails from people asking me if they can buy an ad on next week's episode of SixColors.com.

0:58:57I'll be like, I don't think... what? Do you want a blog?

0:59:02The full template is not completely worked out at that point.

0:59:05What do you want?

0:59:06I think that a lot of that advertising has moved to podcasting.

0:59:11I think so. Yeah, I don't think they're unrelated. And being in both was a good move from the start, right?

0:59:18Yeah, you were lucky that you wanted to be in podcasting as much as you wanted to be in writing because otherwise we may not be having this conversation right now.

0:59:27I hated podcasting and only did it because it was there and it was an opportunity. And what I really had to do was write and only write.

0:59:34This would be... I wouldn't like my job right now because my job is more podcasting than I ever anticipated it being.

0:59:40It's not that it isn't writing. I still am writing. And I'm writing less than I thought I would be.

0:59:45But that's, I think, a natural function of the fact that the balance is different.

0:59:52And in fact, the great thing is it took me, I want to say, more than a year to do membership on Six Colors to do direct support.

1:00:00And I felt really embarrassed about even asking. And then, of course, technically, to set it up, it took like four hours.

1:00:08So I spent a year worrying about it. A year plus. And then it took four hours to make it happen.

1:00:13It took no time technically. It was all just about the worrying and asking people for money, which I didn't want to do.

1:00:19But the fact is, that's how I make money on Six Colors now. Is, you know, 90 some percent of what I do for Six Colors is because of the support of the people who are supporting Six Colors as members.

1:00:34Although there's a podcast component. We do one of the things we do there as a podcast.

1:00:37But, like, I'm very grateful and I'm sure Dan Morin is very grateful because he gets a piece of this, too.

1:00:42Like, that's keeping us afloat on that side. So the business, my point is just that the businesses continue to change.

1:00:49But I am fortunate to have got enough different stuff going on that it's all worked.

1:00:56So my, the components of my job are very different than I would have expected five years ago.

1:00:59But in the biggest sense, yes, it is what I had hoped, but not in the details.

1:01:09Do you have any identity crises related to that?

1:01:13I used to. I used to cite the fact that talking to John Gruber one time, and he pointed out that he doesn't know what to think of himself as because he was making more money from podcasts than from writing.

1:01:25Does that mean I'm a podcaster and not a writer?

1:01:27And I went through that, too, a couple years ago where I realized there was a year where I wasn't making more money from podcasting than writing, but it was close and the writing was on the wall.

1:01:36But next year I would be more of a podcaster than a writer in terms of of revenue.

1:01:42And it was a good six months of kind of head scratching.

1:01:47But and if somebody asked me what I do, it's a little complicated.

1:01:51But in the end, they're not that different.

1:01:54There are different aspects of the same thing, I think, of what I what I do.

1:01:58So I'm kind of OK with it.

1:01:59But I do talk to people from my old career and that leads to some interesting things where they are kind of confused about what I do now because I'm writing, you know, a weekly column for Macworld and all that.

1:02:15And you're doing this podcasting stuff.

1:02:17And my response is is often the podcasting stuff is more than half of my income.

1:02:22I'm doing this writing stuff.

1:02:24Yeah. And and from their perspective, knowing me and coming from that background, it's a real head scratcher for them.

1:02:32By essence of my two careers being so intrinsically linked, I kind of can't have a misbalance. So like I can't be more of my I can't have more of my money being made as a podcast host one month that much more than being a person who sells podcast advertising.

1:02:55Because they all kind of go together.

1:02:57They go together.

1:02:58And of course, like I do make money from shows that I'm not on, but it tends to be that they fall within a small variance of each other of what's making more money.

1:03:11The ads that I've sold or the shows that I'm on.

1:03:14Right. Because, well, I don't the cut is smaller.

1:03:17Like there's like a whole thing. Right.

1:03:19But it is interesting to me how I do think of myself as a podcast of disproportionately more than I do as a person who sells podcast ads.

1:03:30But the cut of the money is much closer. It's much more balanced than that.

1:03:36And that's just like a thing that will probably always be there for me.

1:03:41But frankly, these days I do actually do less work related to that than I ever have done the sales part because I have a sales manager who does a lot of that for me now.

1:03:51But it's still a huge part of my life.

1:03:55But more I think of running the company, being part of running the machine as opposed to just selling the ads is kind of where I fall now.

1:04:03But none of that is none of that is not what I thought it was going to be anyway.

1:04:09Really, what I'm trying to say is like the struggles that you went through were not things that happened to me.

1:04:15So I didn't spend a ton of time working out if it was going to work because I knew because I looked at the spreadsheets.

1:04:24Right. And you were putting all of your effort into this thing, which was really FM, which is for me, that was a piece of a larger.

1:04:37Yeah, selection of things that I had to put together a little bit understandably, like because the podcasting, it was always been from the beginning, like good for both of us.

1:04:47Right. The stuff that you were doing of us. There was money and the money's continued.

1:04:51But you never were involved. And not right. Like, you don't know if I've sold all the way to the end of the year.

1:04:57I do. I mean, you can always ask me. Right. But like, I know. Sure. Like, there's no debate on it.

1:05:03Yeah, unless it's in our little Web tool that shows me what ads have been sold. I don't know. But I know where I am.

1:05:07I know what the trends are for my own business because I am more directly linked to it and then going out to have to fix it.

1:05:14Which is just a difference in the way that I mean, I don't of all the people that we work with.

1:05:19I don't think that there are many more people that are as closely tied to the numbers as I am because I am the numbers generation machine.

1:05:27Yes. My point is, it's always been different for me. I've known if it's not working. It hasn't been a like, "Oh, I wonder if it's not going to work."

1:05:36I know. So there's just a difference for me. Plus, the reason that I started my self-employment journey was different to yours.

1:05:44Yours is more out of circumstance for the, like you had a decision to make that was kind of put upon you.

1:05:50Where mine was like, "Oh, this is going much better than I thought it was going to."

1:05:54It's like our starting positions were different. I was able to quit probably a year sooner than I thought I was going to be able to.

1:06:01Right? And that was borne out by how long it then was until Stephen was comfortable.

1:06:06Because then it was like, "Alright, this looks good and I'm feeling comfortable now."

1:06:09Where for me it was like, "I know this is fine right now and I might as well just give it a go before and then really put my all into it."

1:06:19So one of the funny things about this, and I know we told this story before, but just to touch on it briefly because it's a fun thing, is Upgrade is not one of the original Relay launch shows.

1:06:30No.

1:06:31But it's as close as you could possibly get.

1:06:35It may as well.

1:06:36Because I knew I would be leaving and I wanted to do a podcast.

1:06:40One of the things that we didn't do at IDG was like I didn't build a podcast around myself at IDG.

1:06:46We had the Macworld podcast, Chris Breen hosted it, and I felt like I didn't feel like any of us who were getting paid full time to work at IDG should go off on the side and then start their own side business talking about the same stuff that they were talking about.

1:07:00And, you know, maybe that was the wrong decision.

1:07:04It did lead to Lex Friedman doing that podcast, Unprofessional, where he specifically didn't talk about tech because it would get him fired, which is funny.

1:07:14But when I left, I realized that, you know, yes, I absolutely have wanted to do this for a long time.

1:07:19And so I contacted you and Steven because you guys had just were in the process of going out on your own.

1:07:26And so I would say by the time I don't know if it was when Relay launched or within like a week of Relay launching, we were talking about doing Upgrade, but it had to wait until, as it turns out, that moment when the week after I left IDG where the iPhone was released.

1:07:42And you were on vacation.

1:07:45I'm trying to find the email now. I'm searching in my emails. I know it's in here somewhere, but it was...

1:07:51I may not have a copy of that. It depends. I probably do because I probably sent it from home and not from work.

1:07:56I know it was very early. I mean, this is maybe a little macabre. I don't know.

1:08:02But my tomorrow is the five year... is five years since my granddad died. And the email that I got from you telling me about all of this was when I was at my granddad's wake.

1:08:19So like, I know it's like a close. I mean, that was just a very strange afternoon for many reasons.

1:08:26Because there's a bunch of things happening to you. But it was very, very soon. I mean, we had a couple of weeks. We were planning for a good few weeks.

1:08:33But as has been shown by the last couple of weeks, Relay FM is like five years and a week old at this point.

1:08:41So it was within two weeks of the company existing that you got in contact, which was wild.

1:08:48Like that is just a wild thing that happened to us. But you're right. It was essentially still a launch show and clockwise at that point because that became within a month.

1:08:59They were our seven shows where it was five before then.

1:09:02Yeah. And we brought those in. Thanks to that IDG, nameless IDG executive who said, "Go on, take clockwise. It's still ticking."

1:09:11I'm pretty sure all those executives are gone, long gone from IDG and clockwise. That clock is still ticking.

1:09:18It is still ticking. It's still a very successful show for us, which we're very happy about. We love clockwise.

1:09:24Yeah. But yeah, that's it. Five years.

1:09:27Kind of hard to believe. And yet also it feels -- I think one of the big things is it feels natural now that this is what we do.

1:09:35Yeah, this is who we are.

1:09:36And on Mondays we do upgrades.

1:09:38We have done every week for nearly five years.

1:09:41Yeah.

1:09:42Go us.

1:09:43Yay!

1:09:44This is the upgrade five-year celebration. We probably won't even mark it because it's going to happen at just the wrong time.

1:09:50There's no game show component, which is good. Thank you, Upgradients, I guess I should also say, for being here.

1:09:57Whether you've been here all five years or are a recent convert, thank you.

1:10:04This, at 200, and it still stays the same, like, upgrades trajectory over those five years has been incredible.

1:10:11And it's, you know, it's both -- it's a very large outlet for us both now. And that is because of our wonderful Upgradients.

1:10:19Yeah, absolutely. It is -- it is -- and I will say about this podcast, it is not -- we follow the trends and we figure out what we want to talk about.

1:10:30So it's not necessarily exactly the content that we would have expected in episode one, but -- and we've grown and progressed and learned a lot of things.

1:10:40And I think it's a better show because of it. But this is what I wanted to do.

1:10:45This was definitely -- this is what I wanted to do as one of the pieces of starting my own independent career was I wanted to have that podcast that we could do every week that people listen to and that we talked about the issues of the week.

1:10:59And that was, you know, one of the -- not to belabor this terrible metaphor, but like, you know, the stool with the three legs, that kind of thing.

1:11:08It's like one of the legs of the stool. Like, you got to have that podcast that's your -- like the talk show, like ATP.

1:11:14I want to have that. And that's upgrade. And it is exactly -- again, not in the details, but in what it does, it's -- I would say it's even more than I could have hoped for five years ago.

1:11:24So thank you.

1:11:26And I still -- still am very honored that you chose me to be your podcasting co-host. So thank you.

1:11:33You know, I have no direct recollection of why I chose you.

1:11:37It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

1:11:39Other than that we had been -- we had done some podcasts together and I thought it was good.

1:11:42And I liked the -- it was -- I like how we got on on this podcast that we just did kind of as random people who didn't know each other.

1:11:50I thought that the connection was good and I liked the work that you did on the prompt especially.

1:11:57But I actually don't remember like the thought process of like Myke's the guy.

1:12:04I wish I did remember that part of it and I don't.

1:12:07But I can put those two things together that we had had some good interactions on inquisitive or command space, I guess, at the time.

1:12:15And that I liked listening to the prompt as I was power sliding through infinite loop. Yeah.

1:12:21All right. We need to do some hashtag ask upgrade questions.

1:12:24Good idea.

1:12:25Because this office gets quite warm.

1:12:27Yeah. Well, like we didn't want birds.

1:12:29This is why we podcast in the morning here, Myke.

1:12:32And I'm not dressed for summer today.

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1:14:18It is time for some hashtag AskUPGRADE questions.

1:14:22My first one comes from Catherine.

1:14:24With the iPhone 8 shipping before the iPhone X in 2017 and the iPhone XS shipping before the XR in 2018, which will ship first this year, the 11 or the 11 Pro?

1:14:35Hmm.

1:14:37I think they'll ship at the same time.

1:14:39I think.

1:14:40And this is going to be the first time in years, right, that they will ship at the same time.

1:14:44Yeah, on September 20th.

1:14:45Mm hmm.

1:14:46Because that would be the expectation.

1:14:48I mean, because the I think that will the 10 ship later because they were struggling to make it.

1:14:54Yeah, these are both not new models, right?

1:14:56Yeah.

1:14:57The reason if the common pattern in Catherine's two examples is there was a model that was basically an iteration of an existing model and then there was a brand new model.

1:15:05And this year, as far as we can tell, they're both iterations on existing models.

1:15:10So they should be able to drop them at the same time.

1:15:12But I did want to include this question because that's a fun little tidbit.

1:15:15Yeah.

1:15:15I like that.

1:15:16It's a little logic problem, too.

1:15:17It's like A can be released with B, but it can't sit next to C.

1:15:22So then who does C go to lunch with?

1:15:24Yeah, who's in the trunk?

1:15:26Who's in the back seat?

1:15:27I don't know.

1:15:28Andrea says, on a recent episode, Jason mentioned a transcription service that he uses.

1:15:33I'm assuming this is for the conference calls for the quarterly earnings.

1:15:37Must be.

1:15:38Which is it?

1:15:39It is called Trint.

1:15:41T-R-I-N-T.

1:15:42I hate that name.

1:15:43It is a terrible name.

1:15:44Trint.

1:15:45Trint.

1:15:46He's your friend.

1:15:47He's your friend.

1:15:48They're good dogs, Trint.

1:15:49Trint transcription.

1:15:50But this is -- how would you write Trint?

1:15:54Does it do a good job?

1:15:55Yes.

1:15:56So what's great about it is there are a lot of services and there are a lot of engines

1:16:00that will take audio files and turn them into text.

1:16:03It's this speech-to-text transcription service.

1:16:08And those vary in quality.

1:16:10And they keep getting better.

1:16:11And I've even noticed just using Trint the last couple of years.

1:16:14Trint?

1:16:15Trint.

1:16:16That it keeps getting better.

1:16:19But the best thing about it is they built this web app around it that's a text editor

1:16:23where you can click at any point in the transcript and hear the audio from that part.

1:16:28And as it goes, it highlights the words.

1:16:30So I'm able to play the audio of the call while reading the transcript and editing it

1:16:37to be correct very easily.

1:16:40That used to be really hard because you had -- I had like a file in iTunes and I was playing

1:16:44it and pausing it and backing it up and all of that.

1:16:47And then, you know, text in a text editor.

1:16:49And that Trint editor -- Trint?

1:16:51Trint.

1:16:52Present.

1:16:53Is good because it puts it all together.

1:16:55And it's the best one I've seen.

1:16:56So this is -- you're doing this after the conference call.

1:16:59I'm doing it during.

1:17:00I actually said Audio Hijack.

1:17:01I said Audio Hijack to split a new MP3 every seven minutes.

1:17:07And I will upload seven minutes.

1:17:09And then I will transcribe that while the next seven minutes is recording.

1:17:12And then when I'm done with mine, I will upload the next MP3 and I go like that.

1:17:18So you're not listening to the call live?

1:17:20I'm not.

1:17:21I'm listening to the call while I'm transcribing it.

1:17:23So everything's seven minutes behind when you're tweeting.

1:17:25Well, it becomes about 25, 30 minutes behind by the time I get to the end.

1:17:29But yeah.

1:17:30So when you're tweeting --

1:17:31I'm not tweeting.

1:17:32Dan Morin is tweeting.

1:17:33Right.

1:17:34Yes.

1:17:35Dan is listening live and tweeting things.

1:17:36I am not listening live, but I'm transcribing behind a little bit.

1:17:41Everyone that I know that does anything to do with the Apple quarterly earnings thing,

1:17:47I just feel so sorry for them because everybody's quarterly earnings situation seems to be horrible.

1:17:53If you're doing any type of reporting or anything, whether you're creating charts and --

1:17:58I don't know.

1:17:59All I have to do is --

1:18:00Did I say thank you?

1:18:01I got my Apple script for charts and I got Trent to do the transcripts.

1:18:04I don't remember.

1:18:05And my job is so much easier now than it used to be because I got these tools to do this stuff.

1:18:08I don't remember if I publicly thanked you for the charts yet because you changed them.

1:18:14I did change my charts.

1:18:15To have absolute values and the four-quarter rolling average.

1:18:19Together.

1:18:20Because I could never understand the rolling average and I needed the numbers and couldn't get them.

1:18:26Now you've got the bars or the absolute.

1:18:28Don't thank me.

1:18:29Thank Dr. Drang.

1:18:30I'll thank Dr. Drang, too.

1:18:32The Internet's Dr. Drang was my -- he's my Yoda of charts.

1:18:37Because I still -- I mean, I know that the four-quarter rolling average is useful to some people, but I just don't know why anyone needs it.

1:18:44I like it because it smooths out that winter quarter being enormous so that you can see trends more easily.

1:18:51But you're right, it's not the real number.

1:18:53But I can still see trends looking year over year.

1:18:55There are still trends.

1:18:56The trends are still there.

1:18:57Well, you're more advanced than some.

1:19:01Year over year is more important than the year itself, I think.

1:19:05That's why I have that other chart that is just the year over year percentage change, which is kind of a nice chart.

1:19:10But you never had all of the charts -- anyway.

1:19:14All the great charts.

1:19:15Now they're all there.

1:19:16Summer of fun.

1:19:17Ben says -- this is probably a result -- this is a follow-up from last episode.

1:19:22Every time somebody brings up the iMac with spinning drive and says that Apple are doing it for cost, I think,

1:19:27SATA SSD is a cheap drop in replacements for hard disks.

1:19:30Apple does it to make the base level purposely bad.

1:19:33It's not a cost thing.

1:19:34What do you think of that?

1:19:36Do you have any reasons for it?

1:19:37Yeah, I went back and forth with Ben on Twitter about this a little bit.

1:19:39I think it's a mistake to look at -- to make assumptions about things like unit price.

1:19:47I am sure that for a comparable amount of storage, just in what I was looking,

1:19:52like a hard drive is at least like half the cost of an SSD.

1:19:55So I think -- do I think that Apple is purposely making the base model iMac bad?

1:20:02I don't because I think what's really happening here is that they know a lot of people buy the base model.

1:20:08That they are just able to afford the base model.

1:20:12And they are making it cheaper by putting cheaper components in it.

1:20:17They are able to make it cheaper.

1:20:19And, you know, part of that is their insistence on a certain profit margin.

1:20:26But I think it's a mistake because you've got to think what are Apple's supply parts or supply costs?

1:20:35What are those costs?

1:20:36What are their standards in terms of reliability?

1:20:39What is their feeling about what the basic amount of storage that an iMac should have?

1:20:46They probably know how people use these iMacs and they realize that for the people who are using an iMac,

1:20:52they are putting photos and videos on there, which means they need more storage and the SSD is not going to satisfy them.

1:20:58They have all that data.

1:20:59So I don't think Apple's making their iMac purposefully bad.

1:21:04I think that they are trying to provide a balance of functionality,

1:21:08including like having space on your iMac hard drive for media with price.

1:21:14And I get it.

1:21:18That said, I feel like it is the few model, I think there's one model left that doesn't even have Fusion Drive,

1:21:26where it's just the slow 5400 RPM hard drive.

1:21:30Like, this is just like all of our complaints back in the day about base storage on an iPhone

1:21:37or about the five gigs of free iCloud that Apple's base is lower than they think it is.

1:21:46And it's kind of crappy and it's sort of beneath their what they should consider acceptable for a customer.

1:21:52So that's kind of my answer to Ben is that they're not,

1:21:59SATA or SSDs are not cheap.

1:22:02They're not cheaper drop-in replacements for hard drives.

1:22:06They do have cost.

1:22:08It's more than a hard drive, especially per gigabyte.

1:22:12And if you're going to say, oh, well, just drop in a 256 SSD instead of terabyte spinning disk,

1:22:18but Apple knows that those users are going to be unsatisfied with 256 of internal storage.

1:22:24So and just saying, oh, well, you can attach an external USB.

1:22:27A lot of people don't do that.

1:22:28So I think Apple's decisions about the iMac are more complex.

1:22:34And that said, I think that it's still a mistake.

1:22:41That what I think their level of base is still a little too low.

1:22:45I get why they might not want to go all SSD right now, but the fusion drive is not great.

1:22:52But at least that's something in terms of making the, you know, the basic Mac experience better.

1:22:59Because the fact is that Apple has spent the last what, five years kind of optimizing everything they do for SSD.

1:23:04And what that means is that the iMac experience is even worse than it was.

1:23:08Because now Apple sort of expects you to have an SSD and that they still sell these computers that don't have them.

1:23:14Laurie, this is we mentioned this earlier, they ask, what's your take on the idea that Apple TV+ will somehow offer access to some sort or some subset of the iTunes movie rental catalog?

1:23:28I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but barring the inevitable licensing issues, it seems like the only way they can justify $10 a month.

1:23:35Yeah, we talked about it. It's a fun idea.

1:23:39But I keep coming back to the contracts, which is I'm sure, right, there's a wholesale price for every rental that they're paying to the studio.

1:23:54And they've got a contract somewhere.

1:23:57Even if contractually they could just basically buy rentals, they're presumably going to pay the wholesale price for that.

1:24:06That's a lot of money.

1:24:07It's not going to happen for that reason.

1:24:09And I will bet you that their contract doesn't let them do this.

1:24:15I will bet you that there's something in there about furnishing these via a subscription model or something like that that precludes them from doing this.

1:24:26And even if it doesn't, I think it would probably anchor their partners if they did this because their partners with this content have streaming deals with prices and windows of release for streaming.

1:24:41So if Apple tried to hack the system by doing this, I think they would anger their partners.

1:24:46Plus they couldn't afford it.

1:24:49Plus there's probably legal language against it.

1:24:52So I like it as an idea.

1:24:54I think it would be great to say you get four free rentals when you sign up for Apple TV Plus.

1:25:00But I just really doubt that it's feasible.

1:25:04And Daniel asks, "Jason, how often do you use the health features of the Apple Watch, such as the ECG?

1:25:11And how much value do you think that the health features actually add to the watch as a selling point?"

1:25:18I don't use the ECG very often at all.

1:25:23I used it sort of as a novelty when they rolled it out.

1:25:26But I do use the fitness tracking all the time.

1:25:29I close my rings and every time I take the dog for a walk, I start a new activity and a new workout.

1:25:39I absolutely do all of those things.

1:25:41So those almost every day, I would say.

1:25:44I think it's interesting as well to see different people's perspectives on it.

1:25:48Because Daniel's saying that you add them as a selling point.

1:25:52I think the health features are the selling point now.

1:25:55I think everything else is additive.

1:25:57Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm definitely in the middle where the health and wellness features are balanced

1:26:03with the kind of convenience of having my weather and getting a push notification and going for a --

1:26:11I mean, although that's kind of a health feature, being able to go for a walk or a run with my AirPods and podcasts

1:26:16without bringing my phone with me is actually a nice thing.

1:26:20But it is kind of related to that.

1:26:21Because really, I think that for most people, for most people, if they're not doing the health stuff,

1:26:28the watch is a nice-to-have.

1:26:30It's adding some benefit, but it's not massively different than your phone,

1:26:35which had all of that information and has all that information on it.

1:26:38But the phone cannot give you, with health, benefits that the watch can.

1:26:44It just can't do it.

1:26:45It can't do all of the tracking of your exercises in the same way.

1:26:49It doesn't do your heart rate.

1:26:51It doesn't do any of that.

1:26:53And so that's what the watch, being a device that is physically connected to your body, can give you.

1:26:57Outside of that, your phone can do all of it and does a better job of many of those things than the Apple Watch can as well.

1:27:05I think the Apple Watch is first and foremost a health and activity device

1:27:09and then also is a connectivity device.

1:27:12When they initially launched it, they had those the other way around, and it didn't work out.

1:27:16And ten other things that it was also not.

1:27:18And when they flipped that around and made it health and activity focused first,

1:27:22which is also what Apple's entire message is now,

1:27:25and then also it's this other great thing,

1:27:29which is also even better if you're doing health and activity stuff at the same time.

1:27:33Because an Apple Watch is never the best device to send a text message or listen to a podcast or make a phone call.

1:27:39It's never the best device for those.

1:27:40But it's really useful for those things if you're also working out at the same time.

1:27:45Right.

1:27:46So that's kind of where I think it is.

1:27:48And how has using relics from the past treated you?

1:27:51That is the other part of Daniel's question, and I'm perfectly happy with my non-Apple Watch life.

1:27:56I like rear watches. They're more attractive to me.

1:27:59I get what I want out of a watch most, which is being able to see the time whenever I want to look at the time.

1:28:04Like, don't move your wrist. Can you see the time?

1:28:07Yeah, it's 2.40. It's on my Mac menu bar.

1:28:10But look, I can see the time by just glancing down.

1:28:13That's what I want, right?

1:28:15And I don't want the connectivity stuff and…

1:28:19The health, I guess? I don't know.

1:28:22It's just not my thing at the moment.

1:28:25That's fine. That's fine.

1:28:26And then our friend Stephen Hackett, you know, he puts the watch on for workouts.

1:28:31It's basically a Fitbit for him.

1:28:33And I have done that, but then stopped doing that because then my watch was never charged,

1:28:38and I didn't want to leave it on the charger for, like, weeks, like, or, you know, like, days or, like, whatever.

1:28:43But the irony of it is that a lot of people I know have gotten into mechanical watches because of the Apple Watch.

1:28:52That they were like, "Oh, Apple Watch. I'll wear a watch."

1:28:55And then sort of like, "Hm, wearing a watch is good. How about a mechanical watch?"

1:28:59And then off they go. They're into the wild blue yonder of the mechanical watch world.

1:29:05So everybody can listen to that episode of ATP where Marco did his data dump about watches.

1:29:12I have a hand-me-down -- we were talking about this because of the context.

1:29:16I have a big wedding anniversary coming up.

1:29:18There's a question of, like, what to get for the wedding anniversary.

1:29:20You know, was it maybe a pen, maybe a mechanical watch?

1:29:23Oh, these are things Myke likes.

1:29:25And I have more pens, nice pens, than I've ever had in my life.

1:29:31And in terms of the watches, not only do I wear my Apple Watch every day,

1:29:34but I also have my dad's Rolex that he bought in the '60s in Switzerland.

1:29:39And that's nice for special occasions like hosting a game show.

1:29:43And so I'm sort of -- I'm happy.

1:29:47I've got a nice, fancy mechanical watch, and I've got my Apple Watch, and I'm good.

1:29:51Thank you to everybody that sent in Ask Upgrade questions.

1:29:54You can always send in questions for us to end the show with the hashtag #AskUpgrade.

1:29:58And you can always help us open the show with the hashtag #SNELTALK.

1:30:02If you want to find our show notes online, you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/260,

1:30:07or you can check in your podcast app of choice, and the link should be there too.

1:30:11Hopefully, maybe, possibly next week we will be drafting,

1:30:15but you're going to have to wait and see about that one.

1:30:17We just don't know yet.

1:30:18We don't know.

1:30:19We'll find out. We'll find out.

1:30:20And it may be in a couple of weeks, aside from event time.

1:30:22But this could be the end of the summer of fun.

1:30:24Summer of fun.

1:30:25Maybe. It's getting a little quieter. Is it going to go yet? Nobody knows.

1:30:29If you want to find Jason online, 6cardles.com, the incomparable.com.

1:30:32Jason is the host of many shows here at relay.fm, as I am,

1:30:35relay.fm/shows for those.

1:30:37Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

1:30:42Thanks to our sponsors this week, The Fine Folk over at Pingdom, Linode, and Smile.

1:30:46And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

1:30:50Goodbye, Jason Snell.

1:30:51Hey.

1:30:52High five.

1:30:53[music]