Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► (beep)

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:03 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Episode number 85, Upgrade is brought to you

00:00:18 ◼   ► by PDF Pen Pro from Smile, Mail Route, and ITProTV.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm Jason Snell, and once again,

00:00:25 ◼   ► my co-host, Myke Hurley, is on assignment.

00:00:27 ◼   ► He went to the Atlanta Pen Show

00:00:28 ◼   ► where they clicked pens.

00:00:32 ◼   ► I don't understand how pens work.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Anyway, so joining me, it takes two people

00:00:36 ◼   ► to fill Myke's shoes.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Each of you gets a shoe.

00:00:40 ◼   ► My guests this week are Scott McNulty.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Hi, Scott.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I'm the right shoe.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And in the left shoe, it's Dan Morin.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Hi, left shoe.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Hi, this is the worst version of Hollywood Squares ever.

00:00:54 ◼   ► You guys are my special guest nemeses,

00:00:57 ◼   ► because you're often pitted against each other in games of chance or skill.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I don't really know what that means.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Although the history of that is lost into time, I believe.

00:01:06 ◼   ► The origin of our nemesis.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Nematude?

00:01:08 ◼   ► Nemesis?

00:01:09 ◼   ► You've always just been at odds.

00:01:10 ◼   ► That's right.

00:01:11 ◼   ► That's just how it works.

00:01:12 ◼   ► As long as the universe has been around, I have despised you, Morin.

00:01:16 ◼   ► So I invited you both for particular reasons, and also we do talk a lot on the Incomparable

00:01:22 ◼   ► podcast which which I host every week as well but I thought it would be fun for us to talk

00:01:27 ◼   ► about computer things and technology things. So thank you for filling Myke's shoes left

00:01:34 ◼   ► and right.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Very comfortable Myke. Thank you.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Here's how this show usually starts is we have some follow up. So I'm going to do some

00:01:40 ◼   ► follow up now. Listener Jeremy wrote in. We were talking about me recording last week

00:01:47 ◼   ► from Arizona where I was on assignment with my family and he was asking if I could use

00:01:55 ◼   ► in this two iOS device method that I used to record the podcast where I was recording

00:01:59 ◼   ► on my iPhone while talking on Skype and also looking at the show notes and things on my

00:02:03 ◼   ► iPad. And listener Jeremy said, "Couldn't you use a USB interface and a splitter to

00:02:10 ◼   ► push audio between the devices for a fairly seamless recording?" And I thought this

00:02:15 ◼   ► was a good point. You could probably bodge something together that would

00:02:19 ◼   ► allow the mic input from the iPad to be, or from the, what, from Skype to split and

00:02:26 ◼   ► go into a different mixer and then have the... and this is my point is you could

00:02:32 ◼   ► probably figure it out but I kind of don't want to do that. It worked fine.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Anybody who's used like a Blue Snowball or something like that, it was the same

00:02:39 ◼   ► experience. You can't hear, your own voice isn't kind of fed back to you, which is a

00:02:43 ◼   ► more pleasant thing when you are podcasting you can tell when you're too

00:02:46 ◼   ► loud or too soft or your peas are popping or anything like that but it was

00:02:51 ◼   ► fine and that's going to be my go-to remote recording thing now is to you

00:02:57 ◼   ► know my iPhone and my iPad if I don't have a mac around because I usually if I

00:03:01 ◼   ► don't have a mac around I've got both of those around but it's not yet the dream

00:03:03 ◼   ► which is that I could like Dan you you did the our Star Wars Rogue One podcast

00:03:09 ◼   ► for the incomparable in a conference convention center

00:03:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was a good experience.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - At the Seattle Comic-Con, and it was one of those things

00:03:17 ◼   ► where it turned out fine, but I had to kind of patch you in

00:03:21 ◼   ► from my recording of your voice, and the dream would be,

00:03:24 ◼   ► in the future, maybe iOS 10, iOS 11, who knows when,

00:03:27 ◼   ► but the dream would be that we would be able to do that,

00:03:30 ◼   ► and you would still have a local high-quality audio file

00:03:35 ◼   ► to send me when you were done,

00:03:37 ◼   ► but we just aren't there yet,

00:03:39 ◼   ► you weren't juggling multiple iOS devices while walking through a convention center.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, I didn't have most of them on me. I mean, the problem with bringing an interface,

00:03:47 ◼   ► too, is at that point, have you really saved anything over bringing a Mac?

00:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, well…

00:03:52 ◼   ► I mean, like, especially like an 11-inch error or something, which I know you've had in

00:03:55 ◼   ► the past.

00:03:56 ◼   ► I do?

00:03:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not that much bigger, and in theory, then lets you do all those things.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So like, if your goal is just to have, you know, less stuff to carry around, I feel like

00:04:05 ◼   ► adding an interface into the mix means like, well, should I do that or just throw a laptop

00:04:09 ◼   ► in my bag?

00:04:10 ◼   ► I'm always bringing my little USB box with me, but this would be a second one, right?

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's like, yeah.

00:04:15 ◼   ► That's a lot of boxes.

00:04:16 ◼   ► That's probably, it's probably too many.

00:04:18 ◼   ► But anyway, the dream is alive.

00:04:21 ◼   ► We'll keep watching it.

00:04:22 ◼   ► You know we will.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Another one, this is in the category of I love things that come in when Myke is not

00:04:28 ◼   ► around that I get to talk about.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Listener Read sent in a link.

00:04:32 ◼   ► There were a bunch of these going around.

00:04:34 ◼   ► was a link to a Verge article about some items that Apple has been dropping in frameworks

00:04:42 ◼   ► and in documents on its website referring to Mac OS instead of OS X, and this was a

00:04:48 ◼   ► Mac OS in a technical document with a capital M for Mac, but closed up. And there's much

00:04:56 ◼   ► speculation that we've had, and I've been talking about it for like a year now, and

00:04:59 ◼   ► Phil Schiller lent a lot of credence to it when he talked to John Gruber and said that

00:05:03 ◼   ► there was sort of a method to Apple's madness with iOS and tvOS and watchOS. So as listener

00:05:11 ◼   ► reads says, could it be that #JasonWasRight about Mac OS changing. What do you guys think

00:05:18 ◼   ► about about having OS X and the big X kind of fade away and go back actually to calling

00:05:25 ◼   ► a Mac OS?

00:05:26 ◼   ► Steven: I think we can all agree Myke was wrong.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Jared. Well, sure, we should do that because he can't defend himself. So absolutely. Although

00:05:32 ◼   ► Although I do think the X, so the X stood for 10, right?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Because OS 9 was before OS 10.

00:05:39 ◼   ► People love Roman numerals.

00:05:41 ◼   ► It's true, and it's been stuck at 10 for a long time.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:44 ◼   ► So I feel like there is a chance for Apple, if I were working in Apple marketing, I probably

00:05:49 ◼   ► wouldn't be on this podcast, but I would also be chomping at the bit to have something new

00:05:56 ◼   ► to brand around, because OS 10 is kind of, it's getting a little long in the tooth from

00:06:01 ◼   ► a branding perspective, I imagine.

00:06:02 ◼   ► My daughter is a freshman in high school and the X predates her existence.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So it's been a long time now.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Well, in fact, it's been almost as long.

00:06:12 ◼   ► I mean, the original Mac OS, so 1984 to 2001 when OS X came out.

00:06:17 ◼   ► It depends on-- OS 9 died.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Because there's the public beta and OS 9 was still there.

00:06:21 ◼   ► They had the funeral at what point, like 2002 maybe?

00:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:25 ◼   ► At 2003, somewhere in there.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And so, I mean, we're approaching that plan.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I mean, it's 15--

00:06:29 ◼   ► It's 2002.

00:06:30 ◼   ► --15 years.

00:06:31 ◼   ► So that was what 18 years I guess and we're at 15 years with OS X. That's pretty close very close point

00:06:37 ◼   ► X was a big thing to like just the iconography of an X

00:06:41 ◼   ► I feel like that was back when like

00:06:43 ◼   ► You know when the E prefix and the I prefix that we have now used so often it was like hip and extreme

00:06:48 ◼   ► And now yeah, and now it's been it's kind of old now

00:06:52 ◼   ► So and I think what's interesting to me about it is you know a lot of people were sort of saying

00:06:57 ◼   ► Well if they want to keep things consistent. We've got lowercase TV OS lowercase iOS lowercase watch OS

00:07:02 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be lowercase Mac OS and I was on that train too

00:07:05 ◼   ► But when it seems like every time they put it in print it's with capital M

00:07:08 ◼   ► Which I think is probably because unlike TV watch and the letter I those are all generic

00:07:13 ◼   ► Whereas Mac is actually like a trademark and like a specific thing so maybe that's rationale for making that

00:07:19 ◼   ► capitalizes

00:07:20 ◼   ► It's not generic like TV or watch and none of us think that they're gonna like turn all of the Mac

00:07:26 ◼   ► products into lowercase, like, get your iMac and it's a lowercase i, lowercase m. And it's

00:07:30 ◼   ► like, that's not gonna happen.

00:07:32 ◼   ► That's your iMac.

00:07:33 ◼   ► That's your iMac.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:35 ◼   ► The e-Cummings computer company.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It's like a iMac, but it's a computer.

00:07:37 ◼   ► That's true.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And wouldn't they be—I'm not a trademark lawyer.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I should point to that.

00:07:43 ◼   ► What?

00:07:44 ◼   ► You're fired again.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Darn it.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Why'd you get on this podcast?

00:07:47 ◼   ► I just opened Skype and here I am.

00:07:49 ◼   ► That's a have-to.

00:07:51 ◼   ► But if they start referring to it as lowercase m, I feel like that then they could lose their

00:07:55 ◼   ► trademark right and it could become like Kleenex has this problem where they are like, "No,

00:07:59 ◼   ► we're not a generic brand. We are a brand and it means a lot of stuff and it's our,

00:08:04 ◼   ► we own it." And Xerox famously also has this problem. So I'm sure Apple does not want to

00:08:08 ◼   ► go down that route.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Tim Cynova The Mac is capital M and they should stick

00:08:13 ◼   ► with it.

00:08:14 ◼   ► Jared Polin Yeah, but that's good.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Tim Cynova People don't talk about it. They also, like

00:08:16 ◼   ► Macintosh as a word was pushed out of the branding sphere, which is fine, but that was

00:08:22 ◼   ► a part of this same Mac OS branding is that like they finally were like look we're not

00:08:26 ◼   ► going to call it a power Macintosh we're not referring to as a Macintosh computer with

00:08:30 ◼   ► Mac as the cute name Mac is the name Mac OS is what it runs it all it's all like there

00:08:36 ◼   ► for the taking and it gets the X out of the way.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Yeah iPhones and iPads running iOS makes sense TV Apple TV is running TV OS makes sense Apple

00:08:45 ◼   ► Watch is running watch with Macs running OS 10 has always been a little bit of an out

00:08:49 ◼   ► I mean it was a little easier back in the day, but now it seems like a total outlier.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I think it's a good thing if they're going to go back to Mac OS.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And hey, I love the classic Mac OS.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I feel like it's bringing a little bit of that back.

00:09:00 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:09:01 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:09:02 ◼   ► >> All right.

00:09:03 ◼   ► >> Get rid of this multitasking.

00:09:04 ◼   ► >> That's right.

00:09:05 ◼   ► I want to set my memory partitions app by app.

00:09:07 ◼   ► >> Oh, RAM disks, everybody.

00:09:09 ◼   ► >> Here's how you do it.

00:09:10 ◼   ► You get info, and then you edit the number in the bottom of the get info box to how much

00:09:14 ◼   ► memory you think the app will need.

00:09:17 ◼   ► And then you close the window and you open the app and hope that it's okay.

00:09:21 ◼   ► That is...

00:09:22 ◼   ► It was a better time.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Simpler in its complexity.

00:09:25 ◼   ► How do you guys feel about managing startup items?

00:09:28 ◼   ► Oh, that's the best.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Conflict catcher.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Let's bring that back too.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Okay.

00:09:32 ◼   ► So basically what we're saying is if you don't remember any of that time, don't worry about

00:09:36 ◼   ► it.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Jason was right.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Sorry, Myke.

00:09:39 ◼   ► You're not here.

00:09:40 ◼   ► So next, I get to defend something Myke said, so that's fun.

00:09:45 ◼   ► whose name I didn't put down, oh well, said, "Did Myke really say that there are

00:09:49 ◼   ► more devices with the Force Touch trackpad than with 3D Touch, because you can do the

00:09:54 ◼   ► math of iPhone sales versus Mac sales?" And while I can't speak for Myke, he's not

00:09:59 ◼   ► here, so I will speak for Myke, I think he meant percentage of the install base. So when

00:10:03 ◼   ► we're talking about that, I think that there are more Macs with Force Touch percentage-wise

00:10:10 ◼   ► or capable, especially since you can just buy an accessory and give yourself Force Touch,

00:10:14 ◼   ► than the percentage of existing iPhones that are out there that have 3D touch.

00:10:21 ◼   ► That's not how the Force Touch works.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I knew it was happening. That's a Star Trek reference, right Dan?

00:10:28 ◼   ► You can't just troll me because Scott is here. That's just not cool.

00:10:32 ◼   ► That's exactly why I control you. And one more bit of follow-up. Lister Morgan wrote in and said,

00:10:37 ◼   ► we were complaining about so many iPad Pro apps in the App Store show iPhone

00:10:42 ◼   ► preview screenshots, which is dumb, and we had no answer. It was a question that

00:10:46 ◼   ► somebody asked, and we were like, "Boy, the answer is it's a bug and it's dumb."

00:10:50 ◼   ► But Lister Morgan points out that

00:10:53 ◼   ► Lister Morgan's app has Pro screenshots that you see. So it sounds like what's

00:10:58 ◼   ► happening is

00:10:58 ◼   ► if the developer doesn't submit iPad Pro screenshots,

00:11:02 ◼   ► the App Store is showing iPhone screenshots, which is still a bug

00:11:06 ◼   ► because if there are iPad screenshots to be had even of the non-pro version, the non-big pro version,

00:11:13 ◼   ► that would probably be worth seeing. But it will display them apparently if they've been submitted

00:11:18 ◼   ► by the developer. So it says listen more. Now I'm picturing, I'm picturing, remember when the iPad

00:11:22 ◼   ► came out and it would run iPhone apps but in like either in 2x or like in native size but really

00:11:27 ◼   ► small? I'm picturing a native size iPhone app running on an iPad Pro. It's like just giant black

00:11:33 ◼   ► bezel everywhere. Pretty much. Or just run it in one-to-one, right? So it's just giant

00:11:40 ◼   ► black and then you can't touch any of the little touch targets because they're way

00:11:44 ◼   ► too small. I wonder if that's just, you know, the App Store by default just shows

00:11:48 ◼   ► iPhone. Yeah, it could be. That's the most prevalent iOS device so it's like, well,

00:11:53 ◼   ► if we have to pick one, iPhone. Well, probably, and the logic was probably if I don't have

00:11:57 ◼   ► the iPad screenshots, the screenshots from this class of device, I'm going to just

00:12:01 ◼   ► default to iPhone because there were only sort of two size classes of device. I guess

00:12:05 ◼   ► I don't know what the behavior is in terms of like if you've got a you know the five

00:12:09 ◼   ► that like a six and are the screenshots for five size screens and do they is there like

00:12:15 ◼   ► a cascade there that happens I don't know I'm sure developers know all about it because

00:12:19 ◼   ► I imagine if you're an app developer you're probably nodding along and saying yes I have

00:12:23 ◼   ► to take screenshots on like five different devices upload them.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Alright, that's the end of the follow-up. So we've got very exciting topics to talk

00:12:34 ◼   ► about with our special guest, but I want to stop for a moment and tell you about one of

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00:14:39 ◼   ► they just demand those office file formats it's just the world we live in

00:14:42 ◼   ► So, Scott, the impetus for me inviting you on was because there is a new Kindle on the

00:14:54 ◼   ► way.

00:14:55 ◼   ► What?

00:14:56 ◼   ► Have you not heard?

00:14:57 ◼   ► No.

00:14:58 ◼   ► I'm sure that you've already ordered it, even though you haven't heard of it.

00:15:01 ◼   ► If they put up a button that was like, "There's going to be a new Kindle," we could tell you

00:15:05 ◼   ► about it in a week or so, but if you'd just like to order it now, click this button, you'd

00:15:09 ◼   ► click the button, right?

00:15:10 ◼   ► I would click the button.

00:15:11 ◼   ► And I've often thought that Amazon should just give me a subscription to whatever Kindle

00:15:16 ◼   ► comes out.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I'll just – Kindle Prime or something, and I'll just – I'll sign up for it, and

00:15:20 ◼   ► they come and I won't question it.

00:15:22 ◼   ► That's actually kind of a great idea.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Like a phone – like a phone contract kind of thing.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Like every two years, you get the new Kindle.

00:15:30 ◼   ► Or every year, whatever.

00:15:31 ◼   ► One of the listeners has suggested an Amazon Dash button for Kindle in the chat room, which

00:15:35 ◼   ► I think is – that's a niche product, but I think one that Scott will use.

00:15:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:40 ◼   ► It's true.

00:15:41 ◼   ► dash buttons. I've been tempted, but…

00:15:43 ◼   ► I don't have any products. I don't buy any products. For people who don't know,

00:15:46 ◼   ► the dash button is this weird Amazon thing where you get a button that's got the name

00:15:53 ◼   ► of a brand on it, like All Detergent or Tide or whatever else. And when you are out of

00:16:00 ◼   ► that thing, you press the button and it automatically connects to your Wi-Fi and places an order

00:16:04 ◼   ► for that thing at Amazon. So it's literally just you stick it where you store your paper

00:16:10 ◼   ► towels and when you run out of paper towels you press the button and paper

00:16:15 ◼   ► towels appear in the next couple of days at your door. It's pretty weird. I don't

00:16:20 ◼   ► want to buy anything sold or processed or process anything sold or bought or any

00:16:25 ◼   ► of that so I'm not a dash-button guy unless it brings me burritos. Alright I'll

00:16:30 ◼   ► refer everybody to our Say Anything episode of Myke at the Movies for that.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Yeah so the new Kindle it's the Kindle Oasis and it's interesting because it's

00:16:40 ◼   ► It's like a $290 product, it comes with a case.

00:16:45 ◼   ► It is like the ultra premium luxury Kindle,

00:16:48 ◼   ► if there could be such a thing.

00:16:50 ◼   ► - With leather.

00:16:51 ◼   ► - With leather, of course,

00:16:52 ◼   ► because that makes it ultra premium.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - Rich Corinthian leather.

00:16:56 ◼   ► - Now we should start by explaining

00:16:58 ◼   ► our Kindle backgrounds here.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I have bought, I think, essentially one model

00:17:03 ◼   ► from every generation of Kindle.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I haven't bought, like, when they upgraded

00:17:06 ◼   ► the kind of base model of the Kindle

00:17:09 ◼   ► and they already had the paper white out.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I didn't go back and also buy the base model of the Kindle.

00:17:13 ◼   ► But I feel like in every generation,

00:17:15 ◼   ► a slayer is born, and also I bought a Kindle.

00:17:19 ◼   ► So I returned the first generation one

00:17:23 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't think it was good enough.

00:17:24 ◼   ► But the second one I kept,

00:17:25 ◼   ► and I gave the second and third generation Kindles

00:17:29 ◼   ► to my parents at one point,

00:17:31 ◼   ► and then my mom gave them back to me

00:17:32 ◼   ► when she switched to the iPad

00:17:34 ◼   ► 'cause she said she wasn't using her Kindle.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Then I gave them to my in-laws,

00:17:36 ◼   ► and they liked them so much that after about a year,

00:17:38 ◼   ► went and bought Paperwhites. And Scott, my understanding is that you have literally bought

00:17:45 ◼   ► like every e-reader ever released. Is that accurate?

00:17:49 ◼   ► That is inaccurate.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

00:17:52 ◼   ► I'm sorry. I have bought... So my Kindle journey starts because I saw a show that was

00:17:59 ◼   ► talking about e-ink and I thought, "Oh my God, that's crazy." And then Sony at that

00:18:04 ◼   ► time was the only big player in ebook readers. So I bought one of Sony's e-readers a PRS-505.

00:18:12 ◼   ► If people--

00:18:13 ◼   ► Catchy!

00:18:14 ◼   ► The Sony people. I know, Sony, they're so great with branding. The hardware, fantastic.

00:18:19 ◼   ► It was nearly impossible to get a book onto this thing, though, which made it a little

00:18:25 ◼   ► less useful. And then about a week later, Amazon announced the Kindle at the time. I

00:18:30 ◼   ► they cost like $400 and the reader, the Sony reader also costs $400. So I bought the Kindle

00:18:37 ◼   ► and it was vastly superior in that I could actually get a book onto it easily, which

00:18:44 ◼   ► was, you know, mind blowing.

00:18:45 ◼   ► That's what you'd sort of expect from a company that's trying to sell you books

00:18:50 ◼   ► instead of the company that Sony, that's just trying to sell you the e-reader.

00:18:52 ◼   ► That's right.

00:18:53 ◼   ► Then walk away.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And that's what they did.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And I was like, I can't use this thing.

00:18:59 ◼   ► So the Kindle, the first Kindle had a weird design,

00:19:03 ◼   ► which I kind of like.

00:19:04 ◼   ► And the Oasis has some echoes of that same design, actually.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And then I've bought a bunch of Kindle since then.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I wrote a book about the Kindle that

00:19:13 ◼   ► was available only on the Kindle, which

00:19:14 ◼   ► seemed like an error on my publisher's part

00:19:17 ◼   ► that they wanted to try it.

00:19:18 ◼   ► So we did it.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Nobody bought it.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I wrote a follow-up book about the Kindle

00:19:24 ◼   ► about the Kindle that actually came out in print that sold a little bit better.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I have a Kobo, I have some Kobos, I have a couple of Nooks. I like e-readers is what I'm saying.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Yes, so you don't necessarily have all of them. Did you ever, you bought a Kindle DX, didn't you?

00:19:37 ◼   ► I have two Kindle DX. Someone tweeted me and said, "Hey Scott, do you have a Kindle DX?" And I said,

00:19:42 ◼   ► "No, I have two Kindle DXs," because they came out with two versions. So much like you, Jason,

00:19:47 ◼   ► I buy kind of the whatever the newest Kindle is of the generation.

00:19:52 ◼   ► So I don't have like the $50 or $40 entry level Kindle or $80.

00:19:59 ◼   ► I don't even know how much it costs.

00:20:01 ◼   ► But it's crap because I've used it.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Don't buy it.

00:20:05 ◼   ► So I have usually the top of the line one.

00:20:08 ◼   ► I had the first of those sort of keyboardless Kindles that they made with the page turn buttons.

00:20:14 ◼   ► and that's essentially, I think, what that low-end Kindle is now, is that. But it's not...

00:20:21 ◼   ► No, I don't. Lauren left it in the seatback pocket of an airplane once, so I was like,

00:20:27 ◼   ► "That's fine. It's fine."

00:20:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but the low-end Kindle does not actually have buttons, so...

00:20:32 ◼   ► Not anymore. It's worse now.

00:20:35 ◼   ► It is worse. They got rid of the buttons. Yeah, for a long time. It's interesting, because

00:20:39 ◼   ► stacking up my Kindles in preparation and looking at how they have evolved throughout time.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And so the first Kindle had lots of buttons, and it had this weird silver

00:20:49 ◼   ► rolly thing and big flappy buttons, turn buttons, and then the next one had,

00:20:54 ◼   ► you know, slightly fewer buttons. They just kept progressing to less and less buttons, and now

00:20:58 ◼   ► the latest premium Kindle, the buttons are back.

00:21:02 ◼   ► >> The buttons are back.

00:21:04 ◼   ► >> It's crazy.

00:21:04 ◼   ► >> It is.

00:21:05 ◼   ► >> Well, there are only two of them, but.

00:21:05 ◼   ► >> It's better than none.

00:21:08 ◼   ► It's the only Kindle, so the Voyage has those page press things, which are kind of like buttons, but they're not really buttons, which are an improvement, I think. But I think I'd like a button.

00:21:20 ◼   ► Yeah, actual physical button, not an area on the screen where if you press hard enough, it slightly vibrates and the page turns. It's not quite a button.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Like, they're like, "What if we gave you something that wasn't a button but acted like a button?" Nope. Nope, that's not it.

00:21:35 ◼   ► not it. I can see what you're going for, but... Dan, what's your history with Kindles?

00:21:40 ◼   ► You just bought a Paperwhite. Is that your first Kindle? No, that's my second Kindle.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Up until that point, I've had for many years the... I don't know, remember what generation

00:21:50 ◼   ► it is, maybe Scott will know. It's the one that has the little D-pad on the bottom. It

00:21:54 ◼   ► was the low-end Kindle at one point. I think prior to this most recent incarnation, it

00:21:58 ◼   ► has physical Patreon buttons. Does it have the keyboard? It doesn't have an actual keyboard.

00:22:02 ◼   ► has a version of a keyboard.

00:22:03 ◼   ► >> The Kindle 4, does it have the little keypad and like four buttons, two on each side?

00:22:08 ◼   ► >> Yeah, yeah, like a back button, a home button, a keyboard button.

00:22:10 ◼   ► >> That's the one that Lauren left in the seatback pocket.

00:22:13 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:22:14 ◼   ► >> Did you, were you on my flight, Dan?

00:22:16 ◼   ► Did you get that from the seatback pocket?

00:22:18 ◼   ► >> I, it was a free Kindle.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't ask where it came from.

00:22:21 ◼   ► No, I bought it a few years ago and just when, at that point when I think it was so cheap,

00:22:25 ◼   ► I was like, oh, you know what, I've kind of been interesting in checking out a Kindle.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I'll just buy this one because it's really very affordable.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And I really liked it.

00:22:32 ◼   ► I've read many books on it.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I have a nice case for it.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And it served me pretty well,

00:22:39 ◼   ► but I think the other day,

00:22:42 ◼   ► what, a week or two ago,

00:22:43 ◼   ► the Paperwhite and a bunch of the other Kindles

00:22:45 ◼   ► were on sale right before they announced

00:22:47 ◼   ► the Oasis for real.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And I thought, well, everybody raves about the Paperwhite.

00:22:51 ◼   ► I know it's the wire cutter's recommendation

00:22:53 ◼   ► and everybody seems to really like it.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So it was like under a hundred bucks.

00:22:57 ◼   ► So I was like, you know what?

00:22:58 ◼   ► It's time to upgrade.

00:22:58 ◼   ► It's time to upgrade.

00:22:59 ◼   ► So I bought the Paperwhite.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I really enjoyed it so far.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I'm currently in the market for a case for it,

00:23:05 ◼   ► but it's my second Kindle.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I really appreciate, I think the biggest thing for me is,

00:23:09 ◼   ► I really enjoy reading on the E Ink screen,

00:23:11 ◼   ► as I think Scott was alluding to.

00:23:13 ◼   ► I find it more pleasurable than reading on the iPad,

00:23:16 ◼   ► at least for books, and I think the big advantage

00:23:19 ◼   ► of the Paperwhite for me is that really

00:23:21 ◼   ► that higher quality screen, I don't know what the resolution

00:23:24 ◼   ► of the older Kindle is, but it is clearly not as good

00:23:28 ◼   ► as the 300 DPI screen on the Paperwhite.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So I've been very pleased with that

00:23:33 ◼   ► because I find that text very sharp

00:23:35 ◼   ► and very, you know, much more close to a printed book page.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So I've really been enjoying that.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I like how simple it is.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I mean, I know there are some people go back and forth

00:23:45 ◼   ► on whether they like the touchscreen

00:23:46 ◼   ► versus the physical buttons,

00:23:47 ◼   ► and I can see the appeal of the physical buttons,

00:23:49 ◼   ► but the touchscreen on that is totally fine for me.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And the software is miles better

00:23:56 ◼   ► than on the fourth generation Kindle,

00:23:57 ◼   ► That's the one where they just recently I think said like you have to upgrade to this version of the software

00:24:02 ◼   ► Otherwise, you know, you'll never get upgrade when you die. Yeah, if you die in the Kindle you die in real life

00:24:07 ◼   ► And that's so good. So, you know having the the latest version of the software is definitely a lot more modern

00:24:15 ◼   ► Hey look pictures of the books that I'm reading rather than just like a an itemized list of books on my Kindle

00:24:21 ◼   ► But that old one I think is gonna go to my mom who has never really used a Kindle

00:24:26 ◼   ► She has an iPad, but she doesn't really read ebooks at all.

00:24:29 ◼   ► I mean, granted, she's also a former librarian, so she tends to get a lot of stuff out of libraries,

00:24:33 ◼   ► which, like, you can do, obviously, with the Kindle, but they go to the library a lot.

00:24:38 ◼   ► So I asked her if she wanted it, and she kind of waffled about it and said, "Yeah, I guess I should check it out."

00:24:42 ◼   ► So I'm going to get her that one, and if she enjoys it and uses it enough, then we'll bump her up to something nicer.

00:24:48 ◼   ► So let's talk about the Oasis. It's an interesting product.

00:24:53 ◼   ► It is the the Paperwhite is remaining around the voyage which was the high-end model before which I've got here

00:25:01 ◼   ► Is and Scott we talked about that the last time I think you were on upgrade

00:25:06 ◼   ► We talked about the voyage because it had just come out

00:25:08 ◼   ► It's it's I I so I have the Paperwhite and and the voyage here and I'm reminded

00:25:14 ◼   ► That the voyage is nicer than the Paperwhite and I think the story is not that the voyages is is is bad in any way

00:25:21 ◼   ► it's just

00:25:22 ◼   ► While it's nicer than the Paperwhite, it is hard for me to recommend it to people over the Paperwhite because

00:25:27 ◼   ► the Paperwhite's a lot cheaper, and it's, you know, you're paying--what are you paying for? Those funny, like, squeeze--

00:25:33 ◼   ► the squeeze the bezel feature and the fact that it's--that the screen is a little bit recessed on the Paperwhite and it's totally flat

00:25:39 ◼   ► on the Voyage. I mean, and the Voyage is a little smaller. There are things about it that are a little bit nicer,

00:25:43 ◼   ► but I can never, in good conscience,

00:25:45 ◼   ► recommend it over the Paperwhite for most people because it's just, you know, it's a--it's--it's

00:25:52 ◼   ► mostly the same and the refinements for most people I doubt are worth the extra money.

00:25:57 ◼   ► But here comes the Oasis which is doing it again, right? It's like even higher up there at $290.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Granted you get the case with it and the case has a battery in it so it can charge the, you know,

00:26:10 ◼   ► charge the Kindle and give it a very, very long battery life and instead of having it be a

00:26:14 ◼   ► separate purchase so that the case price is kind of rolled into there. But it's super thin, it's

00:26:19 ◼   ► It's got physical buttons.

00:26:21 ◼   ► The screen appears to be basically this 300 dpi screen that has not evolved in the last

00:26:26 ◼   ► couple of years.

00:26:27 ◼   ► They say the backlighting is better, or the sidelighting, whatever it is.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It's different technology from a backlight because it's a reflective screen.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So Scott, what do you think about the Oasis?

00:26:38 ◼   ► Where does it fit and why does it exist?

00:26:41 ◼   ► Well, I saw you maybe in Slack or on Twitter talking about how you were disappointed that

00:26:47 ◼   ► it's the same screen as the the voyage you were hoping I imagine as everyone

00:26:51 ◼   ► was hoping that it would be higher resolution but if Kindle Apple Amazon

00:26:56 ◼   ► uses I just named a bunch of brands Amazon uses the e-ink which is the name

00:27:03 ◼   ► of a company yes plays right and so this is I think it's the pearl maybe this is

00:27:06 ◼   ► their highest end screen that they make so it's not too surprising that they

00:27:11 ◼   ► haven't they haven't come out with a 600 dpi e-ink not yet and I imagine I'm sure

00:27:17 ◼   ► I'm sure they're feverishly working on it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► There are some people on the Kindle web,

00:27:22 ◼   ► which I don't know if that's a thing or not, but now it is.

00:27:24 ◼   ► We're hoping that it would be a color screen

00:27:29 ◼   ► because Amazon a couple years ago bought a company

00:27:31 ◼   ► called Liqua Vista, which makes this color screen

00:27:36 ◼   ► that is low power consumption, it's reflective,

00:27:38 ◼   ► it uses a different technology than e-ink,

00:27:40 ◼   ► it uses electro-wetting, which sounds dirty, but it isn't.

00:27:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:45 ◼   ► been to a few electro weddings, they're usually quite fun affairs.

00:27:47 ◼   ► >> It's true. Just bring your wetsuit. And so, people were, there was a lot of,

00:27:54 ◼   ► as with all these things, Jeff Bezos tweeted this thing that said, "Hey, we're going to have a new

00:27:59 ◼   ► Kindle next week." And everybody suddenly had their dream Kindle in their mind that they were hoping

00:28:04 ◼   ► would come out. The biggest one I think is waterproof. Everybody wants a waterproof

00:28:08 ◼   ► Kindle. Even just Jeff Bezos, right, famously reads his Kindle in his bathtub in a Ziploc bag,

00:28:13 ◼   ► which seems weird, but hey, I've done it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► - It works, he's a supervillain, guys, it's okay.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - It's true, he is on a rocket as he's doing it, so.

00:28:23 ◼   ► So I think that Amazon is just doing this thing

00:28:27 ◼   ► where they create a high-end product

00:28:29 ◼   ► that will then trickle down the technology

00:28:31 ◼   ► into other lower-end products,

00:28:34 ◼   ► and this is made for people who, like you and I, Jason,

00:28:38 ◼   ► just buy whatever the latest Kindle is

00:28:40 ◼   ► because we're excited about the technology

00:28:42 ◼   ► we really use our Kindles a lot, and so any slight improvement is welcome because I use,

00:28:47 ◼   ► probably of all my devices, I use my phone the most and then probably my Kindle second to most

00:28:53 ◼   ► because I'm staring at it as I'm reading a book. And anything that makes it a more pleasant

00:28:58 ◼   ► experience and basically makes the Kindle go away because you just want to be lost in a book is worth

00:29:04 ◼   ► it, in my opinion, but I am not a normal consumer. So, much like you, Jason, I wouldn't recommend

00:29:09 ◼   ► the oasis to someone who is just kind of a casual ebook reader.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It's for weirdos like us, basically.

00:29:16 ◼   ► It is for weirdos like us. And for a way for Amazon to fiddle around with stuff and see what

00:29:22 ◼   ► is working and what isn't. It was interesting, they had this press event and they kind of

00:29:27 ◼   ► outlined what their goal was, and their goal with the Kindle is to create a piece of paper

00:29:32 ◼   ► on which you can read any book ever written. And so if you're thinking in that term,

00:29:39 ◼   ► then the Oasis makes a lot of sense because they're just trying to get rid of everything

00:29:42 ◼   ► other than the screen. And they also did some research about how long it takes to turn a page,

00:29:47 ◼   ► and when you're moving your thumb, it takes a little longer than if it's just

00:29:50 ◼   ► right by the page turn button, so they brought the buttons back to make it just kind of—they

00:29:54 ◼   ► want the device to disappear and you to just read, you know, see the story and whatever you're

00:29:59 ◼   ► reading. And so, I think that's what the Oasis is kind of a distillation of this philosophy of

00:30:05 ◼   ► of theirs. And they're charging a lot of money because I think weirdos like us are

00:30:08 ◼   ► going to pay for it.

00:30:09 ◼   ► Jared: Yeah. Well, and there's a market, and I do think that tech nerds also like us

00:30:16 ◼   ► often will roll their eyes at the Kindle. They're not listening now. They forwarded

00:30:20 ◼   ► to the next chapter already.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Steven, because I'm editing this episode, there'll be chapter markers in it. Pro tip,

00:30:27 ◼   ► I add chapters, Myke doesn't. That's how you can tell who edited the episode of anything.

00:30:30 ◼   ► So the—

00:30:31 ◼   ► the... Right, because it's a single-use device, right? And everyone's like, "Pfft!" Yeah, but I just use your iPad.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Or your iPhone. And the answer is that the

00:30:39 ◼   ► LCDs, even now... I took the new,

00:30:44 ◼   ► you know, less reflecty iPad Pro 9.7 inch outside in the

00:30:48 ◼   ► in the sunlight and, you know, even in like the shade of the tree in my

00:30:51 ◼   ► backyard. And it's like, it's not as good because there's

00:30:53 ◼   ► it's a lot less contrast because it's having to shine a bright light through

00:30:57 ◼   ► the screen in order to get

00:30:59 ◼   ► the images to hit your eye and it's different when it's the ambient light just reflecting

00:31:04 ◼   ► off of essentially, you know, the equivalent of a piece of paper. And also it doesn't send

00:31:09 ◼   ► me push notifications about things that are going on.

00:31:12 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** That's the thing. And it sounds crazy because we're all used to having

00:31:15 ◼   ► devices that do all these things. But when I'm reading a book on my Kindle, I am not tempted to,

00:31:20 ◼   ► oh, I should check Twitter or check my email. I feel like I do. It does let me zone into like

00:31:24 ◼   ► what I'm doing on the Kindle, which is reading a book, and I want to be immersed and engaged

00:31:29 ◼   ► in that. And so I'm not jilted out every 30 seconds when a new tweet comes in or something

00:31:34 ◼   ► like that. So I think there's a virtue to that. I mean, I think a lot of people pattern

00:31:38 ◼   ► this thinking like, "Well, the iPod was like a single-use device, and we all saw what ended

00:31:43 ◼   ► up with the iPod." But I don't think the, you know, the iPod, it's hard to argue that

00:31:49 ◼   ► the iPhone has not been, and smartphones in general, haven't been just, you know, innately

00:31:54 ◼   ► superior in 99% of the ways to the iPod. You know, there are some advantages to having a single-use

00:31:59 ◼   ► music player, but they're pretty slim. I think the iPad and such have not reached the same level of

00:32:07 ◼   ► superseding, essentially, with Kindles and eBook readers. They don't have all of the advantages,

00:32:13 ◼   ► or at least the things that they have as advantages, you know, they lack sort of those

00:32:17 ◼   ► killer advantages, like the ability to read in sunlight and super, you know, the screens, the

00:32:22 ◼   ► the ink screen etc so yeah I don't think this follows necessarily the pattern of

00:32:26 ◼   ► the iPod but I can understand why a lot of people feel like oh it must be it

00:32:32 ◼   ► must be superior to have a multi-function devices but in this case

00:32:36 ◼   ► might be more of a toaster fridge.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Yeah that's true and I mean I think Kindle is obviously for people who read

00:32:42 ◼   ► pretty frequently right if you read a book or two a year and there's nothing

00:32:45 ◼   ► wrong with that but you shouldn't be wasting your money on a Kindle.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Just buy those two bucks or go to the library and be done with it and be happy

00:32:51 ◼   ► with your iPad or read them on your iPad. That's fine. The Kindle isn't for you. Every

00:32:55 ◼   ► product doesn't need to be for everybody.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Right, and I do think that in the rubric of analysis of tech nerds, there is always the

00:33:03 ◼   ► single use devices are silly, and there's also this idea that, and it's a black and

00:33:08 ◼   ► white device, like why do we care? And I'm not sure a lot of those people are in the

00:33:13 ◼   ► target demographic of something like a Kindle, which is, you know, when I've talked to people

00:33:18 ◼   ► about Kindle use, the demographic is very different. This is, on some level, a cutting-edge

00:33:25 ◼   ► technology product that is used by way more women than men, I believe, and it's a much

00:33:32 ◼   ► older skewing audience than, especially your average iPad or smartphone. It's hitting

00:33:39 ◼   ► the reader market, which is traditionally older and more female, and that market loves

00:33:46 ◼   ► it, right? I mean, it's not a tech nerd product necessarily. It's a tech product,

00:33:51 ◼   ► and so it's easy for tech nerds to disparage it and be like, "Eh, whatever. It's a

00:33:54 ◼   ► Kindle. It's irrelevant." It's really not. And every time I go on a trip somewhere

00:34:00 ◼   ► and I'm out by the pool or walking along a beach or something like that, there are

00:34:04 ◼   ► Kindles everywhere. So it's one of these things that I think we get too deep down in

00:34:11 ◼   ► tech talk and lose track of the fact that there are a lot of people who are not in the

00:34:17 ◼   ► tech conversation who love these products because they are avid readers and it's a product

00:34:23 ◼   ► for avid readers.

00:34:25 ◼   ► So I still kind of would like to see a color ink display.

00:34:28 ◼   ► I mean they've worked on those for years and they're very hard to do.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I don't want color on my...

00:34:34 ◼   ► I mean if it was literally perfect and no worse and ideally better in every other way

00:34:41 ◼   ► and it had color, I guess I'd be okay with it,

00:34:43 ◼   ► but my concern is it's gonna be a step back

00:34:45 ◼   ► in order to give us color.

00:34:46 ◼   ► - Yes. - And I don't need color

00:34:48 ◼   ► in my plain text on a page,

00:34:51 ◼   ► which is mostly what I'm reading on a Kindle.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - Sure. - And if I were a betting man,

00:34:55 ◼   ► I think we would see the color e-ink display

00:34:57 ◼   ► on a Kindle Fire-like devices,

00:34:59 ◼   ► and they would keep the Kindle,

00:35:01 ◼   ► the black and white e-ink for a while

00:35:03 ◼   ► until it got to parity, or better actually, right?

00:35:06 ◼   ► 'Cause to Jason's point,

00:35:07 ◼   ► I think color needs to be better.

00:35:09 ◼   ► - And not as it needs to be better.

00:35:10 ◼   ► I mean I don't think it would work very well even on the Fire because all the other stuff

00:35:13 ◼   ► you want to do on that probably wouldn't be good enough to do say video, right?

00:35:16 ◼   ► Certainly not.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But it might be good enough to render say graphic novels.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Actually the Liquavista display is all about playing video.

00:35:24 ◼   ► That's what they designed it for.

00:35:25 ◼   ► That's weird.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I mean it's still not good enough to be in production, but that's what their goal is

00:35:30 ◼   ► to make it a perfect low-power consumption video playing screen.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Strange.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Well…

00:35:38 ◼   ► Technology is weird.

00:35:39 ◼   ► So I also wanted to talk about, and this is for people who are still with us and want

00:35:45 ◼   ► to hear us talk about Apple a little bit. I got a little, when Scott was describing

00:35:50 ◼   ► the march of the buttons off of the Kindle, I had a Steve Jobs moment because famously,

00:35:56 ◼   ► you know, this is why Steve Jobs wore pullovers, is he hates buttons. There was that iPod shuffle

00:36:03 ◼   ► that had no buttons. The war on buttons is real, people. And Amazon was fighting it too.

00:36:09 ◼   ► had the power button and then they dropped all of the other buttons that used to be page

00:36:13 ◼   ► turn buttons and a home button that were physical buttons. And with the paper wipe, there are

00:36:17 ◼   ► no buttons. So on Dan's screen, if Dan wants to turn the page, he needs to tap or swipe

00:36:24 ◼   ► to do that. And on the Voyage, you can, like I said, squeeze the bezel in the designated

00:36:30 ◼   ► places to go forward or back, and it gives you a little haptic buzz and it turns the

00:36:36 ◼   ► page. But with the Oasis, they are not only bringing back physical buttons, but they've

00:36:45 ◼   ► expanded the bezel on one side. It's this kind of asymmetric thing where the bezel is

00:36:50 ◼   ► wider on one side. But I actually kind of love it, in theory, because I haven't actually

00:36:56 ◼   ► played with it yet, because one of the problems with the way that the Voyage is set up is

00:37:03 ◼   ► the bezel is so narrow that when you squeeze the little button,

00:37:07 ◼   ► you risk tapping the touchscreen next to the little button,

00:37:11 ◼   ► which I can't tell you how many times I've squeezed the page back button,

00:37:15 ◼   ► but my thumb has grazed and I've gone like two pages

00:37:18 ◼   ► back or two pages forward, or just by resting my thumb

00:37:23 ◼   ► on the button but not squeezing it yet, my thumb makes contact with the edge of

00:37:27 ◼   ► the screen and it turns the page when I don't want to.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It's just that there's a hardware usability problem

00:37:33 ◼   ► that it looks like they're recognizing when they made the expanded bezel on one side of the Oasis.

00:37:40 ◼   ► So it feels like they're actually paying attention to how people use their product, which is good,

00:37:43 ◼   ► and that they realize that physical buttons provide a level of feedback that no little haptic embedded in the Kindle can do.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I feel like they got so much grief for the original industrial design of the Kindle that they were like,

00:37:59 ◼   ► fine, we're going to make it look better. Who cares how it works? It'll look like every other

00:38:05 ◼   ► black slab in your life and you'll be happy." And then we realized, actually, for a Kindle,

00:38:12 ◼   ► maybe it shouldn't be like every other black slab in your life and it should maybe have a

00:38:17 ◼   ► weird shape because you're holding this thing in one hand generally and having a larger bezel so

00:38:23 ◼   ► that your thumb doesn't graze the screen, that happens to me all the time as well, Jason, is

00:38:27 ◼   ► actually a good thing. It may look kind of weird in product shots, but that's why in

00:38:32 ◼   ► almost every one of their product shots somebody's holding the darn thing because they want you

00:38:36 ◼   ► to see that yes, it may look weird because it's got kind of this big bulbous battery

00:38:41 ◼   ► thing and thin on one side and thick on the other, but that's because you're going to

00:38:47 ◼   ► hold this in your hand, dummy, and that's the way you should use it.

00:38:51 ◼   ► >> Yeah, as if we haven't spent all these years trying to design books to be held and

00:38:56 ◼   ► right? Like, you know, "Hey, books! Turns out there's a spine on only one side."

00:39:00 ◼   ► Weird. Like, we should make it some of the original kindles.

00:39:03 ◼   ► The original Kindle was just like that. People were like, "This is stupid and I hate it!"

00:39:07 ◼   ► Yeah, there were baffling things about the original Kindle's line. The one that always

00:39:10 ◼   ► got me was that it was white. And when you're using early generations of e-ink, where it

00:39:18 ◼   ► essentially—if you can think back to this, Scott, and you've got one in front of you right now,

00:39:21 ◼   ► now so I know you can't. It was a sort of dark grey text on a medium grey background.

00:39:29 ◼   ► The contrast of the screen was not great. And then you have the bright white plastic

00:39:33 ◼   ► bezel around it saying, "This is how white it should be, but it's not!" And it was just,

00:39:38 ◼   ► I don't know why they did that. It took them so long to get to grey or black for the bezel

00:39:43 ◼   ► where it made your eye think that that gray background was actually white. So there were

00:39:52 ◼   ► lots of weird things about it. But yeah, I agree. I think they pushed it too far. Maybe

00:39:56 ◼   ► they felt shame that they weren't fancy like so many other tech products were. And

00:40:02 ◼   ► I think the physical buttons should be on every Kindle, not just the highest of the

00:40:05 ◼   ► high-end ones. But yeah, what do you make of including the case with that? Is that just

00:40:12 ◼   ► a way to force everybody to buy a case or is there more to that? And then the fact that

00:40:18 ◼   ► it's got a second battery in it, so you have weeks and weeks of use.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Well, I think this is another, you know, obviously Amazon has a whole lot more data about how

00:40:27 ◼   ► people use their Kindles than we do, so I can only talk about how I use my Kindle. But

00:40:32 ◼   ► when I'm traveling, it is nice. I love my Kindle for the fact that I don't have to charge

00:40:37 ◼   ► it very often, right? I also hate my Kindle because I don't have to charge it very often

00:40:40 ◼   ► I never think about charging.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:42 ◼   ► When I'm in the middle of a book, it says, "Hey, you need to charge your kindlers because

00:40:45 ◼   ► shut off."

00:40:46 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Ah, where's the cable?

00:40:47 ◼   ► I need to quickly get it."

00:40:48 ◼   ► Scott, don't you just switch to another Kindle at that point?

00:40:51 ◼   ► Well, I could do that as well.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Always have three Kindles at the ready for this.

00:40:55 ◼   ► If you have one Kindle, you have no Kindles.

00:40:59 ◼   ► If you have two Kindles, you have one Kindle.

00:41:01 ◼   ► That's the rule.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So I love the fact that, so e-ig, super low power consumption, you never have to charge

00:41:08 ◼   ► these things until you have to charge them, I guess, which is true of everything that you have

00:41:11 ◼   ► to charge. But it is. So the Kindle Oasis changes this. The actual device itself has a couple of

00:41:20 ◼   ► weeks charge, which is still a long time and long enough to forget to charge it. But when you have

00:41:25 ◼   ► the case, which you have to buy, it has a battery in it. And so they say that it lasts for months,

00:41:31 ◼   ► which is great because when you're traveling on your world, going around the world, because

00:41:37 ◼   ► people still do that, right? For months on end, you don't have to charge your gear.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Jared "Seth" Kuznicki Or you're hiking in the back country where there's no power.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Brian "Brent" Kuznicki Exactly. And so, I think of it less as a cover, because I think,

00:41:48 ◼   ► and I haven't used one either, but I think what's going to happen is you'll have it in the cover as

00:41:53 ◼   ► it's just kind of hanging out, and then you're going to take the cover off when you're going

00:41:56 ◼   ► to read because it makes it heavier and it's easy to take the cover off because it's magnets,

00:42:00 ◼   ► right? So, how do they work? So, you pull it apart, it's a light Kindle, you drop the cover

00:42:04 ◼   ► off and then when you're done put the cover back on and it's charging.

00:42:08 ◼   ► That's how I imagine how they envision people using it and I think that's how I'll use it

00:42:12 ◼   ► as well.

00:42:13 ◼   ► So I think it's actually a really clever idea.

00:42:15 ◼   ► I'm not sure there are some people who are like, "Oh, maybe there'll be a whole bunch

00:42:18 ◼   ► of other accessories that'll use this," because it has like a much like the smart whatever

00:42:23 ◼   ► the heck Apple calls the...

00:42:25 ◼   ► Smart connector.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Smart connector.

00:42:27 ◼   ► There you go.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Thank you, Dan.

00:42:29 ◼   ► It has the same kind of dealio, so perhaps there'll be more accessories for it.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not because Amazon changes the Kindle form factor radically

00:42:36 ◼   ► every time.

00:42:37 ◼   ► So, it seems like it is not long for the world, but maybe that will show up on the Fire and

00:42:43 ◼   ► more stuff will be there for the Fire.

00:42:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:42:45 ◼   ► But I think it's a clever idea.

00:42:46 ◼   ► The one thing I don't like about the cover I have for my Kindle voyage, I have the origami

00:42:51 ◼   ► cover, which I love, which turns the cover, it's a cover and a little stand, so I can

00:42:55 ◼   ► just put it on a table or whatever.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And they have a leather version of it.

00:42:59 ◼   ► And I was kind of hoping that the Kindle battery cover Oasis thing, whatever they call it,

00:43:04 ◼   ► would have the origami feature, but it does not.

00:43:06 ◼   ► So that was kind of a bummer.

00:43:07 ◼   ► >> Wow.

00:43:08 ◼   ► >> Scott, well, here's a question for you, Scott.

00:43:10 ◼   ► You have, since you have so many Kindles, what is your daily reader Kindle?

00:43:13 ◼   ► Which one do you carry with you?

00:43:14 ◼   ► Which one do you travel with?

00:43:15 ◼   ► Do you switch or do you have just one that's sort of like your default use?

00:43:20 ◼   ► >> Well, I enjoy Kindles, but the previous generation Kindles have no worth for me.

00:43:23 ◼   ► So it's a Kindle voyage or nothing, right?

00:43:26 ◼   ► why would I want to use a crappier Kindle? I like them as a historic oddity, but I'm

00:43:32 ◼   ► never going to use my first generation Kindle to actually read anything.

00:43:35 ◼   ► No, I don't advise it. I don't advise it. And that's what I do, too. Lauren's got the

00:43:39 ◼   ► old Paperwhite and I've got the Voyage, and that's absolutely what I would use. You know,

00:43:45 ◼   ► the thing that really bugs me is that they still do, even on this high-end one, they

00:43:49 ◼   ► still do the special offers thing, and then you have to pay like 20 bucks to remove the

00:43:53 ◼   ► ads from the, and sometimes the offers are good, but it's just like you turn off your

00:43:57 ◼   ► Kindle and there's like an ad there. But what really bugs me is even if I pay, I don't get

00:44:03 ◼   ► to choose the screensaver. I have to use Amazon stock images on the screen. I still am baffled

00:44:09 ◼   ► about why they haven't made it so that you could like put your own images on there or

00:44:14 ◼   ► have it show the cover of the book that you're currently reading.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Yeah, the Kobo does that.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Yeah, well there are hacks for the older models that will do that too, although I'm not sure

00:44:23 ◼   ► whether the Jailbreak has brought it up to date with the Voyageette, it probably has.

00:44:29 ◼   ► They're always jailbreaking Kindles, believe it or not.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And I had that for a while and it was a lot of fun, but it's annoying that not only does

00:44:39 ◼   ► their base price include Kindle ads, Amazon ads, but when you pay to get it off you still

00:44:45 ◼   ► can't like customize it and personalize it in a way that you probably should but

00:44:48 ◼   ► I don't know. And they're bundling a cover with it so you're not gonna see

00:44:52 ◼   ► I can understand the ads with you know other kiddos that don't come with covers

00:44:56 ◼   ► because it's the screen saver thing right so you're gonna see the ad but we

00:45:00 ◼   ► have the cover if a cover comes with the thing the ad is gonna be covered up most

00:45:04 ◼   ► of the time. Yeah but when you open it up instead of auto unlocking and taking you

00:45:08 ◼   ► where you want to be it instead shows you the ad and you have to swipe which

00:45:12 ◼   ► is terrible. So I wanted to mention my... It's the worst thing in life. It's the worst

00:45:18 ◼   ► thing ever. My Kindle case has worked with all of my preceding Kindle models because

00:45:25 ◼   ► I don't have a case. I have a slipcover. Like a fancy armchair. It's like a Kindle sock.

00:45:34 ◼   ► And it works great. It's a neoprene case that I bought for my Kindle 2 and I still use it

00:45:38 ◼   ► because kindles are all roughly the same shape and size and it's worked so far

00:45:42 ◼   ► but I'm getting this new one and it comes with a case so I guess I'm using

00:45:46 ◼   ► that now you don't have to yeah just throw it away stupid battery case get

00:45:50 ◼   ► out of my life I want to mention one other thing which is a weird a weird

00:45:56 ◼   ► thing that I did is I bought the the this this crazy thing the pop slate - oh

00:46:03 ◼   ► Oh, for your iPhone.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Which I wanted to try, yeah, which is it's an e-ink screen

00:46:08 ◼   ► in an iPhone case.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And so you put it on the back.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And it's also like a battery case, too.

00:46:13 ◼   ► But the idea is that your iPhone pairs with it

00:46:18 ◼   ► and sends it data.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And you have e-ink, like always on e-ink display

00:46:25 ◼   ► on the back side of your iPhone.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And it seems totally impractical.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And it has no e-book solution, which basically means,

00:46:32 ◼   ► like I think that I will need to you know convert e-book files and load them

00:46:38 ◼   ► on there for it to possibly work but I still think it's a cool it's a it's a

00:46:43 ◼   ► cool fun idea until we get to the point where phones you know can can be on all

00:46:49 ◼   ► the time their screens and I know there's some some phones on in Android

00:46:52 ◼   ► phones that will show you they'll show you like the clock all the time but

00:46:57 ◼   ► aren't there some Android phones that have the ink second screen - I feel like

00:47:01 ◼   ► There's one. I think there's one currently that has a second screen on the back that

00:47:06 ◼   ► is just E Ink. And I always thought that was very clever, so I decided that I would, for

00:47:10 ◼   ► $89, I would try this ridiculous E Ink display thing for my iPhone. So I'll report back

00:47:18 ◼   ► to upgrade about that at some point. But we should probably move on. Any final thoughts

00:47:23 ◼   ► about Kindles before we go to the next topic?

00:47:26 ◼   ► I love them so much.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I know. I'll put Scott's picture of his collection of Kindles in the show notes from his upgrade

00:47:35 ◼   ► prep. And you can see the first generation Kindle, it's right there. Just look for the

00:47:38 ◼   ► weird wedge-shaped button and you will know.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Yes. There were many problems with the first generation Kindle. I don't want to overstate

00:47:46 ◼   ► how good it was, but there were some good ideas there.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, seriously, that's one of the very few products that I've ever bought and

00:47:54 ◼   ► used for the whatever the 20-day the 30-day return policy in about 20 days and I'm like

00:47:58 ◼   ► nope it's not it's got to go back I was so wanted to keep it and I just couldn't anyway

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00:50:32 ◼   ► and and the reason that I invited Dan on the show today.

00:50:37 ◼   ► See, I, yeah, I know we have to move on to Dan now.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Nemesis we're moving to the left.

00:50:42 ◼   ► We're moving to the left shoe now.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Left shoe.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Wow.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Wow.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Yes.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Looks like the shoes on the other hosts.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Um, I don't understand what you're talking about.

00:50:52 ◼   ► So Dan is famously a fan of the Amazon echo.

00:50:55 ◼   ► I once added marshmallows to a shopping list while he was

00:50:57 ◼   ► listening to an episode of upgrade.

00:50:59 ◼   ► At least once.

00:51:00 ◼   ► At least I've done, I've turned off his light at one point with

00:51:04 ◼   ► just remotely by our podcast.

00:51:06 ◼   ► This is like its own show, Jason.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:51:10 ◼   ► And I just bought an Amazon Echo.

00:51:12 ◼   ► And I just thought, since we're talking about Amazon Kindles

00:51:15 ◼   ► and things like that, we should also probably talk

00:51:17 ◼   ► about another-- you know, we give

00:51:18 ◼   ► Amazon a lot of grief for the Fire Phone, which

00:51:21 ◼   ► was a complete flop.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Scott wrote a book about the Fire Phone too, by the way.

00:51:25 ◼   ► I do.

00:51:25 ◼   ► I have one of them on my desk right now.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:51:28 ◼   ► How do you feel about the Fire Phone?

00:51:30 ◼   ► I think that it was not as bad as people said it was,

00:51:34 ◼   ► although it is a perplexing product.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Yeah, fair enough. I mean, just because people didn't buy it doesn't mean innately that it

00:51:40 ◼   ► was bad. It was, I think there are lots of reasons people didn't buy it, but...

00:51:44 ◼   ► There are lots of reasons it's bad.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah, but they're not necessarily all the same. It has some interesting ideas. But we

00:51:52 ◼   ► give them a hard time for products like that, but you know, we've just been talking about

00:51:55 ◼   ► Kindles and then the Amazon Echo was greeted initially with raised eyebrows, I think, by

00:52:01 ◼   ► but has really gained a lot of momentum in people are talking about it and a lot

00:52:05 ◼   ► of tech people who poo-pooed it originally have heard their friends who've had it,

00:52:11 ◼   ► have loved it, and they've come around and that's really what happened with me,

00:52:14 ◼   ► where Dan kept praising it and I finally just kind of gave in and I got one.

00:52:19 ◼   ► I just do what Dan says, that's basically it.

00:52:24 ◼   ► I should point out, I also have an Amazon Echo. I was going to ask, you've got two

00:52:30 ◼   ► I do. I think Dan also has two. I also have two. I'm behind the curve.

00:52:36 ◼   ► There you are. As soon as it came out, I ordered it, and then it came, and my wife was like,

00:52:40 ◼   ► "What have you done? Why do we need this?" Yeah, well, I mean, that's the question we all asked, right?

00:52:45 ◼   ► What have we done? Why do we need this? Do we need this? Where am I? Why am I in this handbasket?

00:52:50 ◼   ► So why is the echo so appealing when it seemed like it was potentially pointless early on?

00:52:59 ◼   ► Well, I think that part of it is that it did seem pointless early on because it seemed

00:53:03 ◼   ► like, okay, this is a thing that we can already do with our phones and our iPads.

00:53:06 ◼   ► We've got Siri on all those, voice activated assistance on the newer iPhones.

00:53:10 ◼   ► You can even summon it without having to use the buttons.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And I think, why would you need a thing that's stationary and lives in one room?

00:53:16 ◼   ► And the answer is in part, A, because Amazon's implementation was very good, especially on

00:53:21 ◼   ► the hardware side, where even though, and I live in a small apartment, but as Jason

00:53:26 ◼   ► just sort of intimated by the fact that he mentioned he can add stuff to my shopping

00:53:30 ◼   ► list when I was listening to this podcast with my speakers on. The Echo is very good

00:53:34 ◼   ► at hearing things even multiple rooms away and that's because of its microphone setup.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Amazon's done a really good job making a device that lives up to its sort of usefulness, right?

00:53:43 ◼   ► We could all have imagined there was a device of this sort that just didn't work very well

00:53:48 ◼   ► but their execution was excellent. And I think comparative especially to if you spent some

00:53:54 ◼   ► time using Siri, especially on the Apple watch, it sometimes feels like the implementation

00:53:59 ◼   ► there is less than excellent.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And I think it is.

00:54:04 ◼   ► So yeah, I think part of it was that Amazon did the did a really good job with this product

00:54:10 ◼   ► and that it ended up being more useful and more to the point they've ended up continually

00:54:14 ◼   ► building in more and more new functionality along the way.

00:54:19 ◼   ► So I think that they-- it's weird because it doesn't fit into any convenient category,

00:54:24 ◼   ► right?

00:54:25 ◼   ► Like, we all saw this device and we were like, what is this?

00:54:27 ◼   ► It's like a standalone Siri and a Bluetooth speaker?

00:54:30 ◼   ► That sounds insane.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And it turns out that this is a product category that we didn't know that we wanted or needed.

00:54:39 ◼   ► And I think more of the sort of big factor here is that it feels very much like a computer

00:54:45 ◼   ► that is sort of in the air around you at all times.

00:54:49 ◼   ► And there are times where that's exceptionally useful to have.

00:54:52 ◼   ► You know, we, I, Scott over there, a big Star Trek fan, we are all used to the computer

00:54:58 ◼   ► activated voice interface star, you know, computer from Star Trek.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And something about that sort of translates, I think, to the Echo, which is kind of neat,

00:55:05 ◼   ► which is the idea that I, if my hands are full or I'm not near my phone or whatever,

00:55:10 ◼   ► I can ask for some information and I can have it delivered to me and usually pretty accurately.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And so that combined with some of the functionality Amazon's built in, the fact that they let

00:55:20 ◼   ► you hook into outside third-party services, has made it surprisingly compelling.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And I really, I found mine really useful.

00:55:30 ◼   ► That's why I went out and bought a second one to play around with.

00:55:32 ◼   ► My girlfriend, you know, when she was here actually got really used to having it and

00:55:36 ◼   ► playing the radio stations on that when we were cooking.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And so she bought one for her own apartment.

00:55:41 ◼   ► So there's something very compelling about it.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And as Jason said, many of the people that we know in different tech circles have sort

00:55:47 ◼   ► of bought into it.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And I think I've heard from very few of them who haven't really enjoyed it in some

00:55:53 ◼   ► way.

00:55:54 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like a lot of people have been like, "Oh, I bought this thing and

00:55:55 ◼   ► it was totally useless."

00:55:56 ◼   ► A lot of them are like, "Yeah, kind of coming around on this being a really useful product."

00:56:00 ◼   ► So I think voice is a very natural way to interact with technology, and we're only

00:56:05 ◼   ► going to see more of that.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Scott, what about you?

00:56:10 ◼   ► Have you been happy with your Echo?

00:56:13 ◼   ► I have been very happy with my Echo, happier than I thought I would be.

00:56:17 ◼   ► I bought it mostly because I buy gadgets.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And it was there, and I was like, "It's kind of a cool idea.

00:56:24 ◼   ► I don't know why I would need it, but I'll buy it."

00:56:26 ◼   ► And so I did it on Amazon.

00:56:27 ◼   ► You know, they sent you these things, and they're like, "Ooh, you're a special person

00:56:30 ◼   ► here.

00:56:31 ◼   ► You get early access to pre-ordering the Echo."

00:56:33 ◼   ► And I'm like, "I don't even know what an Echo is, but I'll order it."

00:56:36 ◼   ► So I ordered it, and it showed up.

00:56:38 ◼   ► And for a while, it wasn't really doing much for me.

00:56:41 ◼   ► was just kind of sitting there. But then I got, to Dan's point, about one of the things that I

00:56:47 ◼   ► think is great about it is that it just, you know, suddenly it knows how to do more stuff,

00:56:51 ◼   ► which is kind of frightening when you think about it, but very cool in practice. And so,

00:56:56 ◼   ► before that, the other purchase that I had made was I decided that we needed Wi-Fi light bulbs

00:57:01 ◼   ► in my house without asking my wife. So, I got a whole bunch of Wi-Fi light bulbs, and my wife was

00:57:07 ◼   ► like, and I said, "Okay, Marisa, when you want to turn on the light, you can't use the

00:57:12 ◼   ► switch anymore. You have to get your phone out and use this app and be on Wi-Fi, and

00:57:19 ◼   ► it's super cool." And she looked at me like I was crazy, and she almost made me return

00:57:23 ◼   ► them.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Because they're also slightly dimmer than our other lights, which she didn't like. But

00:57:27 ◼   ► anyway, but long story short, the Echo learned how to turn on our lights, and this has been

00:57:34 ◼   ► a wonderful thing in our life. Now, Marisa will talk to me again because she really likes

00:57:40 ◼   ► that we can say, "Alexa, turn on the living room," and the lights come on. And it's pretty cool.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Also, one of the things that I like to do with Alexa is, and if people who have one,

00:57:52 ◼   ► I'm going to ask about how the weather is in your area. So, "Alexa, what's the temperature today?"

00:57:56 ◼   ► And then Alexa tells you what the temperature is and what the little forecast is. It's very helpful.

00:58:01 ◼   ► You can also ask her how old celebrities are.

00:58:03 ◼   ► That's just one of my favorite things to do.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually really enjoy that it hooks in with TuneIn, which is a service that essentially streams radio stations.

00:58:12 ◼   ► So I frequently will be washing the dishes or cooking something and I can just tell it to start playing our local NPR station.

00:58:19 ◼   ► And it will just do that without any questions.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Whereas it's a little trickier in Siri and it doesn't work as well.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I also like, and I've mentioned this before in several places, the Echo has one of the

00:58:30 ◼   ► best Bluetooth implementations because once you've sort of paired your device and set

00:58:34 ◼   ► it up, you can just say, "Connect my phone," and it will connect your phone.

00:58:39 ◼   ► And for anybody who's turned devices on and off and worried about pairing Bluetooth devices,

00:58:42 ◼   ► it's so much easier to just be able to say, "Do this," and it's done, at which point you

00:58:48 ◼   ► can start playing your podcast or whatever.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I also like the hook-in with Prime Music, which may not have quite the breadth of catalog

00:58:55 ◼   ► that say Apple Music does, but for something that I got basically for free for already being a Prime subscriber, it's pretty darn good.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and we have pretty good luck with saying, you know, play this song or play this artist and sure enough there

00:59:06 ◼   ► it goes, goes off playing some, you know, Johnny Cash or what have you.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And so I think all of that is, it's super cool to not have to like navigate through multiple layers of like an interface

00:59:16 ◼   ► to be like, alright, I'm gonna open Apple Music, I'm gonna search for Johnny Cash, I'll find the album I want,

00:59:20 ◼   ► I guess I'll shuffle everything.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Like, you know, as easy as that all is,

00:59:24 ◼   ► it's funny that we're making fun of a snort phone interface

00:59:26 ◼   ► for being super complex, because the answer is, well,

00:59:29 ◼   ► that's super advanced technology that actually makes things

00:59:31 ◼   ► much easier than they used to be.

00:59:32 ◼   ► But what's easier still is just telling your voice-activated

00:59:36 ◼   ► robot to do this thing.

00:59:38 ◼   ► And--

00:59:39 ◼   ► I have a bunch of Sonos speakers in my house, which I love.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I love Sonos.

00:59:43 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:59:44 ◼   ► It works very well.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Easy to set up, easy to use.

00:59:47 ◼   ► it is not as easy as saying to your Echo, "Play NPR."

00:59:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:51 ◼   ► - And so when I came in to my house

00:59:53 ◼   ► and Marisa was listening to NPR, she was in the kitchen.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Our Echo is in the living room

00:59:59 ◼   ► and we have a Sonos in the kitchen,

01:00:01 ◼   ► but she was listening to NPR on the Echo

01:00:03 ◼   ► because it's just so much easier to say, "Play NPR,"

01:00:06 ◼   ► than open the Sonos app and then click, you know.

01:00:08 ◼   ► - I actually wish that-- - Even Sonos

01:00:10 ◼   ► sounds much better.

01:00:10 ◼   ► - I wrote a piece about this.

01:00:12 ◼   ► I want Sonos, and they had a perplexing press release

01:00:15 ◼   ► where they sort of said that they realized that voice and streaming are where things

01:00:19 ◼   ► are going, that I want Sonos to make a deal with Amazon so that if I've got Sonos speakers

01:00:26 ◼   ► in my house, that I can tell them what to play from the Echo, like just have the Echo

01:00:31 ◼   ► and Sonos kind of all work together.

01:00:33 ◼   ► The Sonos speakers are vastly superior to the Echo speakers.

01:00:36 ◼   ► Even the Play One, the little one that's roughly the same size as the Echo, is so much

01:00:41 ◼   ► better as a speaker.

01:00:43 ◼   ► you know, you've got the one Echo. It would make sense for them to do some integration there,

01:00:48 ◼   ► and Sonos has sort of Apple Music support. There are ways that this could really work well together.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And right now, you know, you can attach an Echo, the little Echo, the Echo Dot to a Sonos

01:01:01 ◼   ► speaker that like the Play 5 that's got the audio in. But in the end, you know, you now have a

01:01:06 ◼   ► better speaker, but you're not using any of the Sonos features anymore. You've just turned your

01:01:10 ◼   ► expensive Sonos speaker into a dumb speaker, which is kind of not the point.

01:01:15 ◼   ► DUMB SPEAKERS! Stupid speakers!

01:01:18 ◼   ► So it's like, I think this is the problem with a lot of this home tech, because I also

01:01:22 ◼   ► love those features and just having that echo in the air of your house, that from anywhere

01:01:30 ◼   ► you can just say a thing and it knows what you're doing. And it has to be good at telling

01:01:34 ◼   ► you in words because, unlike Siri, which often punts to the screen, it's like, "I looked

01:01:39 ◼   ► this up for you." I'm like, "I don't want to see that right now." Alexa can't do that.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Alexa has to tell you an answer. And sometimes it fails because this is still really early

01:01:49 ◼   ► days of this stuff. But the frustration with a lot of this stuff is the lack of connectivity.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Now I've noticed Amazon is making a real effort to add more stuff to Echo all the time. And

01:02:03 ◼   ► there's this whole trigger system where you basically, people, third parties can write

01:02:07 ◼   ► their own things and they're not deeply integrated you have to say "hey lady in

01:02:11 ◼   ► the box trigger this thing" but that means that Amazon doesn't have to do

01:02:16 ◼   ► all the heavy lifting that's their third-party app platform basically and

01:02:20 ◼   ► on Dan's advice I got a Logitech Harmony hub which talks via one of these

01:02:30 ◼   ► triggers through if this then that to the Echo so now I can like turn on my

01:02:34 ◼   ► TV on and off and control other devices using that which is pretty awesome

01:02:41 ◼   ► yeah but as to your point the problem then is like once you started using that

01:02:45 ◼   ► you got used to that it's super confusing to now think oh man you know

01:02:48 ◼   ► what's cool is that you know my fire TV or Siri on my Apple TV lets me search

01:02:52 ◼   ► for things by voice

01:02:54 ◼   ► why can't I do that with my echo or why can't I give those like set top boxes

01:02:58 ◼   ► more specific commands because it's kind of limited and I think that's the most

01:03:03 ◼   ► damning thing is like once you started using this and sort of dip your toe in the water

01:03:07 ◼   ► and you realize where the limitations are you're like oh there's so much more room to

01:03:10 ◼   ► do super cool stuff here I wish they would integrate as it's your point I wish they would

01:03:15 ◼   ► integrate better and the there's also the the problem that we're retrofitting this is

01:03:20 ◼   ► so early days that we're retrofitting our our homes and our lives to this stuff and

01:03:26 ◼   ► Scott's example is is the one that I use a lot too which is we too have a light switch

01:03:32 ◼   ► that must remain permanently on, unless one of the-- last night, one of our bulbs dropped

01:03:38 ◼   ► off the Wi-Fi network, I think because I rebooted my router.

01:03:42 ◼   ► What a weird world we live in.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And it could-- well, you haven't lived until you've updated your light bulb's firmware,

01:03:47 ◼   ► let me tell you. And so I used it for that. But other than that, it just stays on. And

01:03:52 ◼   ► of course, logically, if you've got smart bulbs, what you want is a light switch that's

01:03:56 ◼   ► a smart switch that is always feeding them energy but is just sending essentially a Wi-Fi

01:04:02 ◼   ► command to them when you flip it off to turn them off, but they're not really off in the

01:04:08 ◼   ► old school version of off. But that requires different wiring and replacing your switches,

01:04:13 ◼   ► and if you're renting you can't do that. But that's because it is dumb. You can be like,

01:04:19 ◼   ► "Yay! I put all new bulbs in everywhere and they're all smart." Now, never touch the light

01:04:23 ◼   ► switches, not even by accident, and if you want to turn a light off, we've got this

01:04:28 ◼   ► handy switch here, you can't touch it, you have to find your phone and unlock it and

01:04:32 ◼   ► launch this app and then press the button to turn the light switch off. Or tell the

01:04:36 ◼   ► lady who's listening all the time, perhaps. But it's just not quite there, but it's

01:04:42 ◼   ► close. I just had that same moment that I need to replace the rocker switch that I've

01:04:46 ◼   ► got that controls my outside lights. Ideally I would replace that with something that was

01:04:50 ◼   ► smart and acted like the current switch but wasn't actually cutting the power it was just

01:04:55 ◼   ► talking to it over over Wi-Fi and we're just not there yet.

01:04:58 ◼   ► So once again we can have the technological innovation of being able to turn a light on

01:05:02 ◼   ► or off from a switch in a wall not directly connected to it via the internet.

01:05:07 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Well the Hue, Philips Hue, those are the bulbs I got they have a little switch that you can

01:05:12 ◼   ► buy I don't know it's the light switch it's a button I think that you can.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Yeah because it is confusing when I have guests mostly it's confusing because they're like

01:05:18 ◼   ► like how I turn the lights on, and I'm like,

01:05:19 ◼   ► well, you have to talk to the cylinder, or you can--

01:05:23 ◼   ► - Talk to the cylinder. - You can use your phone.

01:05:26 ◼   ► And it's very confusing to people.

01:05:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I have not gone down, fully down that road yet.

01:05:32 ◼   ► I have a switch, I have a Wemo, Belkin Wemo Smart Switch,

01:05:37 ◼   ► which is connected to a standing lamp.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Therefore, it doesn't require a switch in the wall,

01:05:42 ◼   ► but that lamp basically is on all the time,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and then the switch turns it on

01:05:46 ◼   ► not enough specific times of day,

01:05:47 ◼   ► but I can also override that using either the Echo or a Wi-Fi

01:05:50 ◼   ► app.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I remember showing that to my girlfriend very early on.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And she was like, oh, I pulled out the phone,

01:05:55 ◼   ► like turned off the light using the phone.

01:05:57 ◼   ► And just to your point, exactly where you were, Scott,

01:05:59 ◼   ► basically like, uh-huh, that's great.

01:06:02 ◼   ► What if I just want to turn the light on

01:06:04 ◼   ► and I don't have your phone?

01:06:07 ◼   ► Don't do that.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Go into another room, maybe.

01:06:10 ◼   ► That's right.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Here's a flashlight.

01:06:13 ◼   ► One step forward, two steps back.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Well, that's why I was complaining about tech nerds poo-pooing the Kindle earlier, but I'll

01:06:21 ◼   ► say this is why tech nerds exist, is for us to try this stuff out and step in all of these

01:06:25 ◼   ► holes and point out that all of these things are bad.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And by the time regular people get to them, hopefully some of these holes will be filled

01:06:32 ◼   ► in.

01:06:33 ◼   ► But we get to be on the cutting edge where we can't touch any of our light switches.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Maybe this is a product idea, like a little tape that you can put over your light switches

01:06:42 ◼   ► saying, "Do not touch. Smart." These have been smartened. Don't touch them anymore.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Pete: That's right.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Jared. That was, they will be angry if you touch them.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Brian. Yeah.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Pete. I do love my Wi-Fi lightbulbs, I will say, though, because I like the fact that they will

01:06:57 ◼   ► just turn on around sunset. You don't have to do anything, it just happens. It's fantastic.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Brian. So, my outdoor lights are like that, where they are, they come on in the morning and in the

01:07:06 ◼   ► evening and they come on around sunset in the evening and then stay on until like 1130.

01:07:12 ◼   ► or 11 and in the morning it's the same thing they come on at like 6 and then go off at sunrise and

01:07:18 ◼   ► That as the as the seasons change it just takes care of itself. It's pretty great

01:07:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I have the same thing with my we most which and I'm thinking about expanding that because it's a little more

01:07:29 ◼   ► Versatile than the light bulb situation for me

01:07:32 ◼   ► Just in terms of like if I burn out a light bulb I can still you know replace that light bulb. Yes. Yeah

01:07:41 ◼   ► Alright, well I'm gonna move on to Ask Upgrade, I think. This has been a good conversation.

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01:09:42 ◼   ► All right, you guys ready to do some Ask Upgrade?

01:09:46 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I am ready.

01:09:47 ◼   ► - All right. Some of these questions might be for you, you see.

01:09:49 ◼   ► Lister David wants to know, "Why does everybody want to kill the MacBook Air now?"

01:09:55 ◼   ► We were talking about this last week.

01:09:56 ◼   ► It's cheaper and faster than MacBooks.

01:09:59 ◼   ► It's more ports than MacBooks and it's cheaper and lighter than the MacBook Pro.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I think the answer is nobody wants to kill the MacBook Air except Apple.

01:10:07 ◼   ► David, the MacBook Air knows what it did.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Ever since it went on that murderous rampage, I feel like it should die.

01:10:15 ◼   ► The Gs are numbered.

01:10:17 ◼   ► You're for the laptop death penalty is what you people are saying. You are monsters, but so is the MacBook Air apparently.

01:10:22 ◼   ► No, seriously, I love the MacBook Air.

01:10:24 ◼   ► I think a lot of people would really like the MacBook Air to be updated with new processors and a retina display,

01:10:28 ◼   ► a display but it's very clear that the MacBook is the MacBook Air successor. Apple has made

01:10:34 ◼   ► it that way. So we're not trying to kill it. I think we're trying to acknowledge the fact

01:10:38 ◼   ► that it's over because Apple would have probably called it the MacBook Air if they wanted to

01:10:43 ◼   ► keep that name around. It seems like the Air name is being phased out. I think the iPad

01:10:48 ◼   ► Airs will be renamed at some point to probably just iPad since there's iPad Pro and the MacBook

01:10:55 ◼   ► Air likewise the the MacBook is the MacBook Air successor so I will I plan on running my 11-inch

01:11:03 ◼   ► MacBook Air like into the ground basically until the MacBook One is you know sufficiently improved

01:11:10 ◼   ► has to replace it it's gonna be a few years before it's even as fast as my MacBook Air right so

01:11:15 ◼   ► you know maybe the MacBook Pros will be as thin and light as a MacBook Air by then and that will

01:11:19 ◼   ► be the difference I don't know and that's that's the the air signifies right that it's lighter and

01:11:24 ◼   ► thinner and I feel like that's just what they're going for across their product line anyway,

01:11:27 ◼   ► so why have a special model that is all about that when they just want it for all of their

01:11:32 ◼   ► laptops and iPads to be light and thin.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Yeah, they're over it now and the MacBook is going to do that from now on anyway.

01:11:41 ◼   ► That's your fewer ports, cheaper, faster, lighter thing in the long run as the MacBook

01:11:48 ◼   ► Air is allowed to sort of age away.

01:11:49 ◼   ► I doubt it will ever be updated.

01:11:51 ◼   ► I think it's just going to fade away.

01:11:52 ◼   ► It would be nice if they gave it another update.

01:11:54 ◼   ► But probably just price drops.

01:11:56 ◼   ► It exists.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Price drops.

01:11:58 ◼   ► It exists to be a sub thousand Apple laptop right now.

01:12:01 ◼   ► That's that's the reason that it's still around.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Something else will fill that slot eventually.

01:12:06 ◼   ► So that was listener David.

01:12:07 ◼   ► This is a different listener David, but I assure you the name is David, but it's not

01:12:11 ◼   ► the same one.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I just bought a new Mac Mini for my 16 year old and was very surprised.

01:12:14 ◼   ► It's a November 2014 build.

01:12:17 ◼   ► When will Apple update them next?

01:12:19 ◼   ► Wow.

01:12:20 ◼   ► The Mac Mini.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Mac Mini knows what it did again. Yeah, there's one on that murderous man

01:12:25 ◼   ► It's really there are some see there's some kinks to work out

01:12:29 ◼   ► It's the the Apple goes usually pretty long without updating the Mac mini

01:12:35 ◼   ► I feel like that is a every once in a while when they think of it. They're like oh, yeah

01:12:38 ◼   ► Yeah, we added this thing the Mac mini. Here's a press release about it. We don't talk about it otherwise. Bye. Bye, so this is

01:12:44 ◼   ► 2014 - it's only or the early 2016 yeah, it's not surprised me at all

01:12:49 ◼   ► priorities. It's a low priority. This, you know, there'll be at some point a chip generation

01:12:54 ◼   ► change that Apple will be like, "Yeah, okay, that'll fit in there," and they'll do an update.

01:12:59 ◼   ► The disappointing thing of the 2014 models is that the chips that they used didn't support

01:13:04 ◼   ► the like four core model, so it's all just like two core models. There used to be a Mac

01:13:11 ◼   ► Mini that was sold that was actually faster than the fastest of the next generation Mac

01:13:15 ◼   ► Mini because it had more cores and I don't know whether that will change or what. It's

01:13:22 ◼   ► a low priority for Apple so I'm sure they'll update them. My guess would be, you know,

01:13:26 ◼   ► I'd say end of this year because I feel like a two-year cycle is fair but it could

01:13:30 ◼   ► not be depending on what else they got going on.

01:13:33 ◼   ► I either think it probably WWDC or this fall. Yeah. One of those. Yeah. Lister Chris asks,

01:13:40 ◼   ► Do you guys think Apple Watch 2 will offer a configuration to buy just the watch and

01:13:45 ◼   ► skip the band at a lower price?

01:13:47 ◼   ► This is the opposite of what Amazon did with the Kindle.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I don't think it's happening.

01:13:51 ◼   ► No, I don't think so.

01:13:52 ◼   ► No, no.

01:13:53 ◼   ► First off, a bandless watch is not a good look, and you're basically saying, "We're

01:14:00 ◼   ► going to go buy some band from someone else that isn't Apple."

01:14:03 ◼   ► No, Apple's going to make you have a band.

01:14:05 ◼   ► essentially with the new nylon straps you have

01:14:09 ◼   ► you have an option of a nylon band or a sport band at the lowest price of the

01:14:13 ◼   ► Apple Watch Sport which I think is a good

01:14:14 ◼   ► Myke noticed that and mentioned it to me and I was struck by that it's like yeah

01:14:18 ◼   ► basically now you've got a different option for the default

01:14:22 ◼   ► but you need to pick a band and that's gonna be baked into the price

01:14:25 ◼   ► pick a side people yep it's just gonna happen that way

01:14:29 ◼   ► listener John wrote in to say and this is a great one Barnes and Noble

01:14:34 ◼   ► lost the ebook war I want to switch to the Amazon ecosystem while I can do the

01:14:39 ◼   ► better e-readers and more books I listen to the six colors podcast and I do a

01:14:42 ◼   ► secret podcast for six color subscribers and I'd like to buy a

01:14:46 ◼   ► secret podcast which you do not know yes and I'd like to buy a Kindle paperwhite

01:14:51 ◼   ► are there are there any easy ways to transfer books from the nook to the

01:14:57 ◼   ► Kindle. Easy yes, legal question mark. I think you must find a Barnes & Noble representative

01:15:08 ◼   ► and sacrifice them by wearing a full moon. Boy, you guys are killing everybody in the

01:15:13 ◼   ► Ask upgrade. This is dangerous.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Well, Barnes & Noble's nose would have been.

01:15:18 ◼   ► That's true. I think ethically yes, legally questionable, but I'll put a link in the

01:15:23 ◼   ► show notes. Although if you Google search "remove DRM from Nook" you will probably find

01:15:32 ◼   ► this link. It's a link to the digital reader that links to a couple of things. Basically

01:15:36 ◼   ► the, I wrote about this on Six Colors too, there's a tool called Calibre that is an ebook

01:15:40 ◼   ► conversion utility and one of the things that they offer is a plugin architecture and then

01:15:45 ◼   ► somebody has written a plugin that will remove various kinds of ebook DRM from books. It

01:15:50 ◼   ► doesn't work with Apple's iBooks because that uses the Fairplay DRM, you need a

01:15:54 ◼   ► different DRM stripper to do that, but for Kindle and Nook, I believe it will

01:16:00 ◼   ► work. So what you do is, the digital reader article that we'll link in the

01:16:03 ◼   ► show notes says you basically have to download the Nook app on your computer

01:16:07 ◼   ► and you download your books and then you open them in Caliber and you

01:16:11 ◼   ► you've installed this DDRM plugin and you can basically convert them and take

01:16:16 ◼   ► the DRM off of them and then if you want you can convert them to a format that

01:16:19 ◼   ► the kindle will play and then you can put them on your kindle. You can copy them onto

01:16:24 ◼   ► your kindle and that will work.

01:16:26 ◼   ► I realize it's sort of a gray area but I also feel like at this point if that platform

01:16:30 ◼   ► is abandoned you should not feel bad about this.

01:16:32 ◼   ► I agree.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Otherwise that's just like that's just extortion.

01:16:37 ◼   ► I don't think you should feel bad about it even if it were if you just wanted to switch

01:16:40 ◼   ► from the nook to the kindle you shouldn't feel bad about it either. Although I mean

01:16:44 ◼   ► you should not buy a nook if you're listening now because Barnes and Noble doesn't care

01:16:49 ◼   ► about it all that much.

01:16:51 ◼   ► And you can also, I mean, one of the other things I really like about the Kindle is Amazon

01:16:55 ◼   ► makes it easy to put stuff onto it, and they have a variety of what you can email to a

01:17:00 ◼   ► special address, you can download a little app, you can upload a Kindle printer onto

01:17:08 ◼   ► your computer so you can print to your Kindle.

01:17:11 ◼   ► You can plug it in in drag and drop too, right?

01:17:13 ◼   ► Yeah, you can do that as well if you're a caveman.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And I am.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And Dan is, yes.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Yes.

01:17:22 ◼   ► "Lady in the cylinder, turn off the lights in the cave."

01:17:24 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:17:25 ◼   ► I'm on headphones.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Listener Lucas wrote in to say, "Is there any way to make a screenshot on the new Apple

01:17:31 ◼   ► TV that does not require Xcode?"

01:17:33 ◼   ► And I answered him.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Yes.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And I disappointed him.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Sort of.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you can take a picture of your TV set.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Great.

01:17:39 ◼   ► You can use...

01:17:40 ◼   ► Or use a capture box, which is what I have.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Yeah, so you can use something like, I think mine is an Elgato capture box.

01:17:46 ◼   ► You can even do better than that.

01:17:47 ◼   ► My understanding is if you have a USB-C to USB cable and you attach it to your Mac, to

01:17:54 ◼   ► a Mac, you can do the QuickTime screen capture.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Oh, like on a, like doing that with your phone.

01:18:00 ◼   ► As with a phone or an iPad.

01:18:02 ◼   ► And then, so you could do that and then, and then just take a frame and you would have

01:18:06 ◼   ► a screenshot if you want to take a—

01:18:07 ◼   ► But there's no way to like reverse AirPlay, which is I kind of think what he's looking

01:18:10 ◼   ► for.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't think, I don't think you can.

01:18:12 ◼   ► So, so basically you're going to need that special cable or just a dark room and a very

01:18:17 ◼   ► study hand and take a picture of your TV set which is not the best but we used to

01:18:20 ◼   ► have to do that in Macworld for a while.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah. Lister Benjamin wrote in saying sweatshirts and t-shirts are nice but

01:18:26 ◼   ► what you really need is baseball caps next time for upgrade. I will

01:18:31 ◼   ► take that under advisement. Myke may not know what a baseball cap is because they

01:18:35 ◼   ► don't have baseball in England. It's like a cricket cap.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Yeah, a cricket cap. That's exactly it. It's a crumpet cap. But we'll have a...

01:18:41 ◼   ► yeah, is it a muffin, English muffin cap or a crumpet cap? I saw crumpets in the

01:18:45 ◼   ► in the supermarket the other day. Crumpets are excellent. I thought I would recommend.

01:18:50 ◼   ► Yeah, go go to Crumpets. We'll put a bit of crumpet. Anyway, we'll have an orange brain

01:18:56 ◼   ► baseball hat at some point maybe that would be fun. And finally listener Paul wrote in and said,

01:19:03 ◼   ► "If given the opportunity, which episode of Star Trek would Scott forcibly subject Dan to?" Wait a

01:19:09 ◼   ► second, I want to I want to object to the premise of this question that you need to forcibly subject

01:19:13 ◼   ► me to a Star Trek episode as though I have not seen most Star Trek episodes.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Everybody knows that you're a Star Wars fan and that you can't like two things with stars

01:19:24 ◼   ► in the title.

01:19:26 ◼   ► It's clear.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Actually I have forced Dan to watch an episode of Star Trek for my podcast, Random Trek.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Dan was my second guest, Jason was my first guest.

01:19:35 ◼   ► This is like a Random Trek reunion.

01:19:37 ◼   ► We all watched the same Random Episode Trek for today, right?

01:19:42 ◼   ► We did.

01:19:43 ◼   ► No. And it was the episode I forced Ed to watch was By Any Other Name, an original series

01:19:49 ◼   ► episode that includes some people being turned into dice, which was exciting.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Well, they're like styrofoam dice. Large styrofoam dice.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Yeah, they get crushed. But I don't...

01:20:01 ◼   ► Scotty gets an alien drunk in that one. That's my favorite part of that episode.

01:20:04 ◼   ► That's true.

01:20:05 ◼   ► He does. But I reject the premise of the question as well. I don't think that anyone should

01:20:10 ◼   ► be forced to watch Star Trek. If you like Star Trek, watch it. If you don't, don't.

01:20:14 ◼   ► I happen to know Dan likes Star Trek, so if I had to, if there was some weird situation

01:20:18 ◼   ► in which I had to force Dan to watch an episode of Star Trek or else bad things would happen,

01:20:23 ◼   ► I would force him to watch In the Pale Moonlight, a Deep Space Nine episode that I know he likes.

01:20:28 ◼   ► And great choice. Well, thanks to both of you for being on upgrade and filling in Myke's

01:20:33 ◼   ► shoes, one shoe each, which means you've got also a barefoot there, a sock or something.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Shoe only. Yeah, something like that. It was great having you both on. Scott, it's great

01:20:43 ◼   ► to have you back on Upgrade. And Dan, I believe this was your first time on this side of the

01:20:47 ◼   ► microphone, right? For Upgrade. So nice to be here. Is there another side to the microphone?

01:20:52 ◼   ► Yeah, the side where I put marshmallows in your to-do list. This is a better side than

01:20:59 ◼   ► that. To-do marshmallows. Yeah, that's right. What do you do with those marshmallows, Dan?

01:21:04 ◼   ► Dan can decide what he does for them.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsors, Smile, MailRoute, and ITProTV.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And thanks to Myke, wherever he is.

01:21:13 ◼   ► He'll be back next week from his assignment in Atlanta, clicking pens.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And here's where you can find us.

01:21:20 ◼   ► Of course, show notes are in your podcast, F of Choice, or you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/85.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And you can find Scott on Twitter @blankbaby, and he is the host of the Random Trek podcast

01:21:32 ◼   ► on the Incomparable.

01:21:33 ◼   ► can find Dan at D Morin he is the host and co-host of so many podcasts

01:21:38 ◼   ► including clockwise on this very network and of course the rebound which he hosts

01:21:43 ◼   ► with with John moltz and Lex Friedman that's a tech podcast you should check

01:21:47 ◼   ► out thanks you both thanks to you Jason and thanks everybody out there for

01:21:51 ◼   ► listening we'll be back next week see you then

01:21:55 ◼   ► [Music]