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Upgrade

65: Holiday Firewall

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 65.

00:00:15   I am your host, Jason Snell.

00:00:17   My co-host, Myke Hurley, is unavailable.

00:00:20   He is on assignment, I believe, stealing headphones

00:00:22   and microphones from Marco Arment's closet.

00:00:25   The show today brought to you by Linde,

00:00:28   an easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn mail route, a secure

00:00:32   hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam, and making light craft a daily ritual

00:00:38   to focus on what matters most. Joining me filling in for Mr. Myke Hurley is your friend

00:00:45   and mine, the internet's own Mr. Merlin Mann. Hi Merlin.

00:00:49   >>Hey Jason. >>Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.

00:00:52   >>Hi. You know, just what time and what do I wear? I'm always ready. I'm honored. I'm

00:00:57   I'm honored to be here.

00:00:58   You're a busy man.

00:00:59   Mm.

00:01:00   This podcast doesn't really work.

00:01:01   Yeah, but you've got a lot of podcasts now.

00:01:02   No, don't tell them that.

00:01:03   I've told them.

00:01:04   I've convinced people that podcasting has worked.

00:01:06   Shh.

00:01:07   Tell the kid to cut that out.

00:01:08   It's very...

00:01:09   The kid!

00:01:10   Who's that?

00:01:11   Do you mean Myke?

00:01:12   Myke's very young.

00:01:13   He's the kid, yeah.

00:01:14   Yeah.

00:01:15   Yeah.

00:01:16   It was Thanksgiving last week, and I wanted to...

00:01:17   I wanted to...

00:01:18   This is not really follow-up.

00:01:19   This is like calendar-based follow-up.

00:01:20   Follow-up to previous days.

00:01:22   This is follow-along.

00:01:23   Yeah, let's come up with another thing that'll stretch on Syracuse and MAD.

00:01:27   triple dagger yeah exactly right um thanksgiving do you have a uh i i was realizing when i was in

00:01:33   ireland a couple years ago for the old conference i i was in like um was that it or no i was in

00:01:38   ireland for an idg thing and it was october and i was sitting in the um i was sitting in the uh

00:01:44   the airport in dublin and there was christmas stuff everywhere and it was like late october

00:01:51   And I thought, "What happened here?" And then I realized, I think we're fortunate in the United

00:01:58   States to have Thanksgiving because it's like a firewall. It's a little porous, and it gets more

00:02:06   porous all the time, but it's like a firewall between us and Christmas. It's a good signal,

00:02:10   I think, that now, the next one up is Christmas. Now you can do it. And I don't know, I feel like

00:02:21   that has given me added appreciation for Thanksgiving.

00:02:24   Just that it's not only a nice holiday

00:02:26   where we think about what we're thankful for,

00:02:28   but it's like our last line of defense

00:02:30   against Christmas being a thing that happens year round.

00:02:33   - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:02:34   I think the implicit five weeks

00:02:37   of Christmas holiday stuff is plenty.

00:02:39   It's perfect.

00:02:40   You have a big turkey dinner,

00:02:41   you know, you get another turkey dinner,

00:02:42   and then it's New Year's.

00:02:43   Boom, you're out.

00:02:44   But you know, most of what I know about Christmas

00:02:46   comes from what KOIT is playing.

00:02:49   'Cause, you know, when KOIT starts playing Christmas music, it's all over.

00:02:51   You know, 'cause then my daughter makes us listen to Christmas music.

00:02:53   That's easy! What's K- what's KOIT's, uh, called?

00:02:57   K-O-I-T-96.5?

00:02:59   If it is, like, easy listening? Is it soft jazz? What's-

00:03:03   KOIT is, uh, is- is the music that, uh, you can play at work.

00:03:07   It's unobjectionable music year-round.

00:03:10   That's good.

00:03:11   And, uh, but also the seasonal islet Walgreens.

00:03:13   'Cause then once we go to Walgreens a lot,

00:03:16   and when they move out the Halloween candy,

00:03:18   and they start moving in the Christmas stuff, you know, it's all over.

00:03:20   But I agree with you, I think it is a good firewall.

00:03:23   You know, I still feel like this is not going to fly with my kid,

00:03:26   but I still wish it was a little like the Olympics.

00:03:28   I think we should have like a big Christmas every four years.

00:03:32   And then the other three years, it should just be, you know,

00:03:35   maybe we just watch a little more TV for a week.

00:03:37   But that's it. It's just too much. It's just too much.

00:03:40   - Would it be in the summertime on alternating every two years?

00:03:43   - That's right. And cities would lobby to be the home of Christmas.

00:03:46   - That's nice.

00:03:47   I don't know. I mean, I enjoy it. I'm trying to let go and let God and just be more mellow

00:03:51   about the whole holiday thing. Actually, this is not a plug, or I guess it is, but the upcoming

00:03:56   episode of Reconcilable Differences with John Sirquissa and me, we talk about holidays.

00:04:03   And John is very healthy about it, and I get sad around holidays. And we talked about that.

00:04:08   So that'll be a fun way to kick off the holiday season for you.

00:04:10   That's nice. It's like a tradition. Well, you know, this weekend's Incomparable episode

00:04:14   was our tradition, which is to ruin things that people love about the holidays.

00:04:19   [laughter]

00:04:20   I haven't listened to it yet. Did you add another layer to the...

00:04:25   Well, let's just say that the Rankin/Bass 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, while

00:04:30   having a heartwarming story of overcoming people's inability to accept differences,

00:04:41   that how you can be different and that's okay and you can and you should be

00:04:45   yourself which is it which is admirable in doing this it portrays the North Pole

00:04:50   Santa Claus the elves and all the other sort of North Pole culture as horrible

00:04:57   he's the worst kind of manager yeah he kind of he acts like he really he

00:05:01   respects everyone's skills but he doesn't and he'll totally undermine you

00:05:04   the first chance he gets yeah especially if your dad thinks you're kind of a jerk

00:05:07   I mean Rudolph gets gets I mean when Rudolph is born there's a scene where Donner his father basically says

00:05:15   Sees the red the glowing red nose and says well, it's over

00:05:19   It's like he's he's he's not like all the other reindeer and therefore his life is over which again

00:05:25   You know

00:05:26   This is the story Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is that is that they exclude him and then turns out that he's very useful and this

00:05:31   So suddenly he matters and I would stop and say wait a second

00:05:34   That's the only reason that Rudolph is is kept around is he might be some use at some point and then all is forgiven Rudolph

00:05:40   We've ruined your childhood by not letting you pet play the reindeer games

00:05:43   What I'm saying is we ruin that in that all that scarring the scarring made you stronger

00:05:48   Well, like Johnny Storm's mom says have you tried not being a mutant? Yeah

00:05:51   Yeah, yeah Rudolph basically is a mutant. That's what I realized when I was watching it is he's a

00:05:56   Basically about being gay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. Well and and her me the elf who wants to be a dentist

00:06:02   Oink, oink.

00:06:03   There you go, right there.

00:06:04   He pulls all of the embominal snow monster's teeth.

00:06:07   That still completely freaks me out.

00:06:09   That's messed up.

00:06:10   What's he going to do?

00:06:11   At that point, we're like, what is his life like?

00:06:13   After that, is he just gumming?

00:06:14   Glenn Fleischmann suggested he just gums the occasional elf at that point in the future.

00:06:19   Well, that's like somebody who aspires to be an oncologist, and their first thing is

00:06:23   they're really excited to tell somebody they have cancer.

00:06:26   It's like it's the worst part of being a dentist.

00:06:28   Now I am complete, professionally.

00:06:30   I have done that.

00:06:31   - Ham, hocks, and guitar strings.

00:06:33   - Anyway, so that's my, I like the holidays.

00:06:35   I just am very happy for them to have a cap.

00:06:39   And that's one of the things.

00:06:40   I like Thanksgiving.

00:06:40   I think it's a fun holiday.

00:06:42   I get to make a turkey.

00:06:43   I made a turkey.

00:06:44   It was great.

00:06:45   A little brine, the turkey, and roasted it.

00:06:47   - Oh, nice.

00:06:47   - It was all good.

00:06:48   And there's the side dishes, and Lauren's parents came,

00:06:51   and that was all great.

00:06:51   But I also like it because that's like the starting gun.

00:06:54   And so, you know, I'm not gonna crack out,

00:06:56   crack open the Christmas music in mid-November.

00:07:00   I'm not gonna do it.

00:07:01   Even when I want to, I'm like, "No, no, you know what? Let's defer it. It's going to be

00:07:06   more pleasant to play that Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas album. I'm going to

00:07:14   be playing it for the entire month, essentially continuously. So let's wait, and it'll be

00:07:18   all the sweeter when I can press play."

00:07:19   Well, you've got to tune. I'm pretty sure you can get KOIT where you live, and if so,

00:07:23   you'll be treated to an hourly playing of Christmas in San Francisco, which is the worst.

00:07:29   I think it's victim own and it's just it's just it's just terrible and something about

00:07:34   clam chowder in a bread bowl fisherman's wharf and that crazy chicka chicka Chinatown whoever

00:07:41   paid them to mention them in Christmas. Well happy holidays to all whatever your background

00:07:48   it's going to be cold and sad and we want to be there with you. Yeah it was it was pretty

00:07:53   spectacular this year here in here in Northern California I felt as if they just flipped

00:07:57   switch on November 1st and said, "All right, it's winter now." And in our absence of seasons,

00:08:01   it was literally like we had our summer period and then they flipped it and then it's like our winter

00:08:06   period, which I'll grant you, it's not particularly cold, it's not particularly wet, it's not like

00:08:10   other parts of the world. But it was funny this year that we just, there was one season for a

00:08:15   while and then you woke up the next day and it was like, "Oh, I guess we're in the other season.

00:08:19   We're in season B now." - Yeah, it finally feels like it

00:08:20   finally feels a little bit like fall. The weather's gotten so weird in San Francisco. I hate to be

00:08:25   to be that person who's always saying, "Oh, climate change," but like in the 16 years

00:08:29   I lived in this same house in western San Francisco, the weather has definitely changed.

00:08:34   It's definitely not as foggy and depressing all the time, and I think that's not a good

00:08:40   sign. But, you know, hey, it's Christmas.

00:08:43   It's Christmas.

00:08:44   Yay, jingle jangle.

00:08:45   That's right.

00:08:46   Chain rattle, chain rattle.

00:08:48   You don't have, you don't swap out your bell for like jingle bells during the holidays,

00:08:52   do you?

00:08:53   I moved the bell away, Jason. You know I moved the bell away.

00:08:55   You should have the jingle bells though that you can do that instead.

00:08:57   That would be very seasonal. I will do that.

00:08:59   Just as a thank you. I do have some actual upgrade follow up.

00:09:02   BOOOOM.

00:09:03   Follow up.

00:09:04   Follow up.

00:09:05   Yeah.

00:09:06   Follow up.

00:09:07   Thank you. It's all sound effects now. So this is, um, Lister Sam wrote in about a comment

00:09:12   I made. We talked about the fuselage of Apple press releases and I was trying to remember

00:09:16   and I looked it up and it was 2008 where they made, essentially they had a product release

00:09:20   every week for about three months. And I think then they thought better of it. I don't know

00:09:26   why they did it. Maybe they thought it was just a rolling thunder was a good idea. Maybe

00:09:31   Steve Jobs put them up to it. I don't know the reason. But Lister Sam wrote in who works

00:09:35   in the auto industry and I thought this was actually kind of fun. He said, "Going a whole

00:09:39   week between press releases from one of the major companies is unheard of and would be

00:09:42   a sign of something seriously wrong." At the end of year, all hands meeting at one of the

00:09:48   major automakers, communication staff, the VP of Communications proudly proclaimed they

00:09:54   had published 500 press releases in 2013, a year in which there were only 251 working

00:09:59   days, meaning that for every work day, they released two press releases. And he sent a

00:10:05   link to an auto blog that posted a satirical story with the headline, "Ford Sends Out

00:10:11   15 Millionth Press Release." And the lead is, "Ford Today Issued a Press Release,

00:10:15   saying it has reached its goal of sending out 15 million press releases.

00:10:19   So it could be worse, although that's a little different.

00:10:24   But the thing is, most of the Apple press releases in that era were substantial.

00:10:30   At least there was a brand new product.

00:10:33   At Macworld, we had to jump on that.

00:10:35   Clearly, this is a boy who cried wolf situation where, "Oh, another Ford press release.

00:10:41   It must be the afternoon."

00:10:42   Right. Well, the funny thing, I'd love to hear more about this from your position

00:10:47   inside an actual publication, but it seems to me that, you know, Apple in the

00:10:52   years that it's it's got a little more tight-lipped, I guess you could say.

00:10:55   Oh yeah. You know, you've talked about this in other places, the pretty

00:10:58   Steve days where there's all kinds of rumors floating around and they've

00:11:01   gotten so tight-lipped that now that's the official burning bush is like what

00:11:04   comes out on stage and what comes out in those press releases. But I think one of the,

00:11:08   I'm wondering if you agree with this, it seems to me like one of the interesting

00:11:11   things is what they choose to highlight and how they choose to frame it and

00:11:15   maybe by extension what they leave out that you wouldn't know if you didn't

00:11:20   read beyond the press release. Does that cover, does that change the way you cover

00:11:24   something when you look at it in context with like oh they're not mentioning oh

00:11:27   when they announce there's gonna be this upgrade to this particular product but

00:11:31   they're not talking about having more RAM or something. Do you do you end up

00:11:34   doing any kind of Talmudic interpretations? Well it's like it's like

00:11:37   like a tiered information system. And I have talked about this before where it's, you're

00:11:42   in this hermetically sealed keynote bubble where all the information you've got, I mean

00:11:47   you're on the internet, but if you're covering the event, you're not, you know, Tim Cook

00:11:51   isn't on stage talking and you're being like, "I'm going to read the tech specs on Apple.com.

00:11:57   I need to do that now." You don't do that. You're covering what's happening on stage

00:12:00   and then you're usually brought into the hands-on area and you're looking at the products there

00:12:03   and talking to people. But meanwhile, they've also dropped this load of information on their

00:12:08   website, not just the PR, but like the marketing pages. And so that's a tiered information

00:12:13   where you come out of the keynote knowing this stuff and having like, being some of

00:12:17   the only people who've touched these products that are not shipping for a few days or a

00:12:20   week or a month or whatever. But then there are the people who are not there who have

00:12:24   been scouring the internet to see what they say there. So the first thing you do is kind

00:12:28   of compare notes there and like what made it in, what was the spin in the keynote versus

00:12:32   what some of the details are. Sometimes those things will be interesting. They'll say,

00:12:36   "Oh, did you realize that there's no blue version of this thing?" And you'll be like,

00:12:41   "Oh, I didn't realize that. I assumed that all of the new products came in blue." And

00:12:45   they'll say, "No, no, it's only these few, and there's a surcharge for the blue model."

00:12:51   And so you get those details, and you're like, "Oh, that's interesting. They didn't

00:12:54   mention that. I wonder why." And so you think about that. And then separately, then you

00:13:01   You get the product and you realize that there are all sorts of things in it that were not

00:13:07   mentioned and sometimes that can be good and sometimes that can be bad and then you're

00:13:10   comparing it with what sort of your expectations are and like what do they not talk about at

00:13:13   all and if you ask them about it, they have no answer for you.

00:13:17   And that is, that can be telling too.

00:13:19   So there's like little layers of information, the stuff that they want to tell you, the

00:13:23   stuff that is so important that it, because on stage a lot of stuff gets dropped because

00:13:27   there's not time and what you get is the narrative. And then there are the details that you can

00:13:32   get hands on and there are the details that they want to market in their marketing material.

00:13:37   And then there's the, you know, at the center of the egg, there's the or the onion, whatever

00:13:41   metaphor we're using here. It's probably a food metaphor. There's like the actual product

00:13:45   and then and so you have to like, you're calibrating around all of those different things. And

00:13:51   the differences there are often the most interesting parts of the story because it's like people

00:13:54   expected this, but it was not that.

00:13:56   It would seem kind of shocking when you come out and you're so focused on that experience

00:13:59   of being in the room and then, you know, obviously the experience of using this thing that you

00:14:05   learned about an hour ago and then coming out and finding out, probably in some cases,

00:14:09   that there's a big controversy already and you're like, "What?"

00:14:11   Yeah.

00:14:12   That must be really strange to walk into.

00:14:13   Did you realize that they killed the iPod Classic today?

00:14:16   No, there's no press release for that and they didn't mention it on stage, so I didn't

00:14:19   know that, which is also great when you do your podcast right afterward and people are

00:14:23   like, "What about this?"

00:14:24   I don't know.

00:14:25   on their site because I haven't read their site yet and there's a weird imbalance there.

00:14:29   But it can be useful.

00:14:30   You need five people to be caught up with all that stuff.

00:14:32   Yeah, I don't have a staff anymore is the thing, so that's trickier now than it was back in the day.

00:14:36   But it's interesting and you do look for the differences. That's definitely a part of it.

00:14:41   I'll tell you one thing that I think is a little weird.

00:14:43   Not weird exactly, but something that there's some strange holes I've noticed in what people do or don't know.

00:14:52   So you can call it tips and tricks.

00:14:54   But it's funny to me, like almost everybody,

00:14:57   I saw this today on Muni,

00:14:59   where you will see people still quitting apps.

00:15:01   And I'm not one of those people to say

00:15:02   you should never quit an app,

00:15:03   'cause you can actually do sometimes need to quit an app

00:15:04   if it's like eating processor stuff or whatever.

00:15:06   But you know, on iOS, like everybody knows how to quit apps.

00:15:10   But like last week on Back to Work,

00:15:13   and this is not to single out Dan,

00:15:14   but Dan didn't know the contraction trick.

00:15:18   And I would never bother to tell most of my friends

00:15:21   contraction trick on iOS because I assume they've all known about it for years, but

00:15:25   I still meet people every day who are like, "You've got to be kidding me." You know

00:15:29   the trick where you do like W-E-L-L-L and it makes it into wheel?

00:15:33   Oh yeah, yeah, sure. Or you do W-O-N-T-T and it'll make won't.

00:15:38   But what's amazing is as soon as I mention that somewhere, all these people come out

00:15:42   of the woodwork and they're like, "I've been using this thing every day for years

00:15:44   and I never knew that." Or for example, I discovered, I think I mentioned this on Slack

00:15:48   one time, I still have not found a comprehensive list of every, when I say every Siri command,

00:15:55   I don't mean every iteration, but I have not found a comprehensive like KBase article on

00:15:59   the official list of everything you can do with Siri on iOS and everything you can officially

00:16:04   do.

00:16:05   And so a couple of things, I mean, one thing is they really want you to use Siri.

00:16:08   And I don't mean this as a slam, I just think it's interesting.

00:16:10   It's like, I'm kind of amazed there's not a place to go where they could say, "Hey,

00:16:14   you got a half a day to spend on this?

00:16:16   Here's where to get started learning this stuff."

00:16:18   or to learn the trick that we've all taught each other now

00:16:20   with Apple TV of saying like,

00:16:21   "Find the show Agent X," or whatever,

00:16:24   where you have to sort of give it a little bit of help

00:16:29   with keywords.

00:16:30   There's so many little bits of that stuff

00:16:32   that can over time really change your experience

00:16:35   that's not all out there.

00:16:36   So, I don't know, I always think it's really interesting

00:16:38   that there still very much is a place, I think,

00:16:40   for some of that tips and tricks stuff,

00:16:42   especially when one of these new things comes along.

00:16:45   Because I guess the larger point I'm trying to make

00:16:46   is that we all have a certain kind of tunnel vision

00:16:48   about what we know.

00:16:50   There may be people out there who could reel off

00:16:52   every chip set in every device,

00:16:54   but may not know how they can make a contraction

00:16:56   by typing an extra letter, you know?

00:16:58   - They seem, I suspect there is an initiative

00:17:01   somewhere at Apple to do more of this stuff,

00:17:04   and it seems like a no-brainer to me

00:17:06   because how-to content is very strong in general,

00:17:11   I can say, when you're writing about technology.

00:17:13   It does really well, it indexes well,

00:17:15   lives very well over time, people search for this stuff, they want to know how to use something,

00:17:19   they search on the internet. And you know who the number one website would be for any

00:17:23   how-to information about Apple products? The Apple.com, right? And so they do more of that

00:17:29   now, but I'm a little surprised that they haven't gotten to the point where the day

00:17:35   that the Apple Watch comes out, there isn't like a whole, you know, I mean, because they

00:17:42   have marketing pages but and unless they maybe feel like it's a failure if they

00:17:48   need to have it but it's not a failure it's just like people more more

00:17:51   directions of information more channels that you can you can reach if you need

00:17:55   help to have the ultimate help guide with a whole bunch of articles whether

00:18:01   it's like the knowledge base old style tech knowledge base or whether it's

00:18:05   something that's a little more friendly and feels like it's just oh this is the

00:18:08   the Apple.com help zone or whatever for Apple Watch.

00:18:11   And we posted 40 articles today about things you can do

00:18:14   with your Apple Watch.

00:18:15   And they've done a little bit of that,

00:18:16   but I feel like that would be a huge opportunity for them.

00:18:19   And that's, I mean, when they're,

00:18:22   like they've hired a bunch of people

00:18:23   that I used to work with, right?

00:18:24   And I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of that.

00:18:27   And it may be that some of my former colleagues

00:18:30   are doing some of that content,

00:18:31   but that was always our fear at Macworld,

00:18:33   was that the how-to stuff was really great.

00:18:37   And if Apple wanted to do it itself, the jig would be up

00:18:40   because they would dominate

00:18:42   because everybody would go to the source.

00:18:44   - Well, and to that point, though,

00:18:46   I think Apple has, over the years,

00:18:47   apple.com has become more and more of a mullet site,

00:18:51   you know, where you got the party in the front,

00:18:52   or the party in the back business in the front,

00:18:55   where it's, like for example,

00:18:57   when I put out a call on Twitter and say,

00:18:59   "Hey, does anybody know of a page

00:19:00   "that actually has a comprehensive list

00:19:02   "of every kind of thing that you can do

00:19:05   "with an example in Siri?"

00:19:06   And the best I found is a blog post from a blog I'd never heard of.

00:19:09   It's the most comprehensive thing I've found.

00:19:11   Now the thing is, what surprised me was, you know,

00:19:13   of course what people suggested was, we'll go to the page about Siri on Apple.com,

00:19:18   which you can do, which is beautiful, and the images move around and everything.

00:19:21   But it's a marketing page.

00:19:22   Not that that's bad, but you know, it gives you a few examples,

00:19:25   and as you scroll down, it gives you a few more examples.

00:19:28   The trouble is, the part where it becomes a mullet site is if you fall off the map

00:19:32   when you go into the support area or you go into the fora,

00:19:36   because it's not the friendliest experience in the world.

00:19:39   It's sometimes very difficult to find exactly what

00:19:43   it is you're looking for for the version of your OS.

00:19:46   And that's where it really does start

00:19:48   to feel a little bit like a Dell site or something.

00:19:50   And I don't know what the answer to that is.

00:19:51   As we all know, Apple's not the only company

00:19:53   in the world that has trouble with findability.

00:19:56   But I think for now, those sites are going to be very safe.

00:19:59   The super list of-- this will blow your mind

00:20:03   when you see these 516 things you didn't know you could do.

00:20:05   Here's one try this I mean I'm already seeing people on Twitter saying they didn't know about the contraction

00:20:09   Try this one and I had to mention this three different times on back to work before Dan knew what I was talking about

00:20:14   Hold down Siri and say open calendar hold down Siri and say open deliveries

00:20:19   And you will discover especially if you've got a success or success plus

00:20:23   That's actually faster than navigating to the icon

00:20:25   Yeah

00:20:26   Open the app for you in like less than a second and way faster than swiping down and typing the name of the app in search

00:20:32   Which has been my go-to I treat it like quicksilver

00:20:34   So anyway, not to be late with that, but still a lot of opportunities out there.

00:20:38   But you know, the thing in, I've heard you talk about this, a lot of my friends have

00:20:41   talked about this.

00:20:42   I tried to really dial down my blind anger and stabbing because, you know, it's, you

00:20:50   know, first of all, it's not very healthy to do that as an adult, but also you have

00:20:53   to always remember everybody's got a story about finding out how many people are actually

00:20:58   working on something at Apple.

00:21:00   Yeah.

00:21:01   I mean, it really is mind blowing.

00:21:02   I remember first hearing this about the team down in Menlo.

00:21:05   Oh, what was that nice guy?

00:21:06   Andy was the head of the Office team

00:21:09   down in Menlo on Microsoft stuff.

00:21:12   And you hear, like, there's five people at that time

00:21:14   working on Office for the Mac.

00:21:15   And you're like, you've got to be kidding me.

00:21:16   And then you hear, have you heard the story

00:21:18   about one guy that does, like, Wi-Fi connectivity test

00:21:23   and terminal and--

00:21:25   - Oh yeah, I've heard-- - There's like one guy

00:21:26   doing five apps. - Yeah, I've heard that story.

00:21:28   Yeah, 'cause Dan Morin was writing about some app

00:21:30   that's a stock app that is not super well known but it's a

00:21:33   it's an app that is a very useful utility in OS 10

00:21:36   and he got the word that that was a guy

00:21:40   who did it. It's not a building, it's not a wing.

00:21:44   It's just that it's Bob basically and he had to... Bob from the terminal. They asked him to do

00:21:49   something else

00:21:49   and so it just sat there for a while because he was pulled off to work

00:21:54   on something else and it's like

00:21:55   yeah I then again there's there's like

00:21:58   apparently 40 people working on Twitter for Mac and Twitter mobile apps and nothing is

00:22:05   happening there, so maybe it doesn't matter, I don't know. Let's get through a couple more

00:22:11   follow-up items before we move into topics, because we got a lot of topics too. But I

00:22:16   don't want to read the first sponsor before I finish follow-up or I will feel ashamed,

00:22:19   so two more items. Listener Will wrote in and we were talking the other week about the

00:22:26   iPad Pro, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, and how, you know, I felt

00:22:30   like it's a progression in the metaphor and that some of the resistance Mac users have

00:22:35   to the idea that you could work productively on an iPad is because it's a different metaphor.

00:22:40   And we heard a lot of the same resistance from people who use command line computers

00:22:44   when the Mac first was introduced. And Lister Well made an interesting point, which is that

00:22:50   Macs have a command line now, but the iPad doesn't have a window and cursor system.

00:22:58   And what I'll say is that's an interesting point, but you're overlooking the entire classic

00:23:04   Mac OS era where there was no command line underneath the Mac.

00:23:07   We're spoiled as modern Mac users that just as a side effect of the fact that there's

00:23:14   Unix underneath as a decision that was made by Next back in the day, purely as a side

00:23:20   effect and I believe, I truly believe that they tried to minimize it as much as possible

00:23:24   and that if they could have completely hidden it and, you know, poured concrete into the

00:23:30   terminal and thrown it off into the water, they would have. We got it when OS X came

00:23:37   out, but the classic Mac OS had no command line. There was literally no command line.

00:23:41   You could run apps that kind of like faked a command line, but they weren't, they weren't,

00:23:45   they were just apps in the end.

00:23:47   Think about, you've talked about this before, think about arrow keys. Were there arrow keys on the first Mac?

00:23:52   No.

00:23:53   No, because they didn't want you to use the keyboard. They wanted you to use the mouse.

00:23:57   Yeah, absolutely. And the terminal would have been, that would have been a disaster because people would have been just like going back to the command line.

00:24:02   And that was why it was held over my head as a Mac user by people who use PCs with that classic, "I can type a couple of keys and delete everything on my hard drive."

00:24:12   Yeah, good for you.

00:24:14   Right.

00:24:15   but that classic Mac era up until you know that first whatever 16 years of the Mac's existence

00:24:21   there's no command line at all that there was no secret command line that you could get to there's

00:24:27   literally nothing so it was a clean it was a pretty clean break and that's how the iPad feels

00:24:33   to me so yeah I mean and just to further to your point I don't know this will probably get into

00:24:39   is more with the iPad Pro and what makes an iPad Pro, what

00:24:43   is the pro part of that.

00:24:44   But you have to wonder what inflection point happens

00:24:49   for a couple things to happen.

00:24:50   Because there's several things that

00:24:51   would need to happen for us to see the kind of leap

00:24:53   that people are talking about, which, sure, we

00:24:56   could imagine a day where there's an iPad OS, where it

00:24:59   has something like windowing.

00:25:00   But in the meantime, I mean, even what they've got right

00:25:03   now, it's a little rough, like what

00:25:05   you can do with the slide over stuff.

00:25:07   And you're going to have to see an app market where people are

00:25:10   willing to put some resources into making the sort of apps--

00:25:14   I mean, it's a lot of Hakuna Matata,

00:25:16   music goes round kind of stuff.

00:25:17   In order for people to put more attention into the iPad,

00:25:21   they're going to start selling more iPads.

00:25:23   Don't you think?

00:25:24   It feels like it's more complex than just launching

00:25:26   a giant new OS and hoping it does everything in the world.

00:25:29   That's a lot of resources.

00:25:31   It is, although I think something

00:25:35   I wrote about in my iPad Pro review

00:25:37   was that it depends on how you look at it.

00:25:40   I think this is the challenge for Apple,

00:25:41   is do you look at this as a tiny fraction

00:25:45   of what the iPhone does, so we should focus on the iPhone,

00:25:48   or do you look at it as a business that sells

00:25:52   almost twice as many iPads as Macs a year,

00:25:54   and the same amount of revenue as the Mac,

00:25:57   and therefore probably deserves that level of attention?

00:26:01   - Right. - Even though it's the same OS

00:26:02   as the iPhone, you know, the iPad business

00:26:05   is the same size as the Mac business.

00:26:08   And do you think the iPad features in iOS

00:26:11   really get the same level of attention as Mac OS?

00:26:14   And I love OS X, and I use it every day.

00:26:16   But I get the distinct impression

00:26:19   that the Mac gets a lot of attention

00:26:21   because it's got a dedicated team,

00:26:23   and that the iPad doesn't get so much attention

00:26:25   because it's really all just part of iOS,

00:26:28   and the iPhone is always gonna take precedence there.

00:26:30   And iOS 9 is the sign that they seem to have walled off

00:26:35   some resources for iPad features, which they should,

00:26:38   because even if we say, "Oh, well, it's not the next smartphone because it was never

00:26:42   going to be that," and,

00:26:43   "Oh, it's sales are sluggish," which, yeah, there's no real iPad sales growth right

00:26:46   now.

00:26:47   Still, it's a pretty big business, and one of the reasons, one of the ways you get it to

00:26:51   grow, perhaps, is to focus more on it.

00:26:53   I don't know. You pointed out to me,

00:26:57   and it's in the show notes, that just because you can't access

00:27:00   your iPad's command line doesn't mean you can't do

00:27:04   Lots of interesting things with attaching to Mac interfaces and command line interfaces.

00:27:10   Yeah, this is a little bit random, but I just want to mention two quick things that can really...

00:27:15   If you are a power user on an iPad Pro, two things to look at. One is one of our favorite companies, Panic.

00:27:21   Yeah.

00:27:22   It makes a really neat iOS app called Prompt that's a fantastic implementation of a terminal shell on your iPad or iPhone.

00:27:30   I don't have much need to use it, but when I do, I'm typically, just as with all panic

00:27:36   products, I'm really astonished with how well it works. Have you used Prompt before?

00:27:40   Yeah, Prompt and also Coda, which has the command line stuff built in. So you connect

00:27:46   to a remote system that has a command line, usually it's a Unix system, and you've got,

00:27:51   you're in, you're logged in, and you can do all that stuff.

00:27:53   Yeah, that could be something as simple as needing to change, I mean, I don't know, I

00:27:56   I haven't done web development in years,

00:27:58   but needing to change file permissions

00:28:00   or something like that, go create a new directory,

00:28:02   anything like, you know, there are certain kinds of things.

00:28:04   Jeff Veen always used to say,

00:28:05   if he ever had to do anything, you know,

00:28:07   involving like a ton of files,

00:28:09   he always felt like he was faster

00:28:11   at doing that with the terminal.

00:28:12   And that's the kind of mind you get.

00:28:13   It's not so different from deciding whether to use,

00:28:15   like, how do you decide?

00:28:16   Should you use a keyboard or a mouse?

00:28:18   Well, you use both, 'cause they're for different things.

00:28:20   So Prompt is a great way to look at,

00:28:21   but I wanted to also kind of cut the knot

00:28:23   by mentioning an app I like a lot called Screens,

00:28:25   which I'm sure you've got to be familiar with, right?

00:28:27   - Oh yeah.

00:28:28   - So screens is a, check my terminology here,

00:28:31   but it's a VNC app and client that lets you,

00:28:36   you know, you can do this by just turning on,

00:28:39   oh, what's it called these days?

00:28:40   Is it still back to my Mac?

00:28:42   Can you basically turn on?

00:28:42   - Yeah, it is still back to my Mac,

00:28:44   or just screen sharing in general.

00:28:46   - Right, but what I like about this,

00:28:48   screens have some nice things,

00:28:50   especially if you're sharing multiple Macs.

00:28:52   There's all kinds of things you can configure

00:28:54   to have it remember.

00:28:55   And I tooted at the folks who make screens about a request.

00:28:58   And apparently, just for what it's worth-- well,

00:29:01   let me explain what this does.

00:29:02   If you've never used this before,

00:29:03   if you have screen sharing enabled on the Mac

00:29:05   that you want to get to, and you're

00:29:06   on your iPad in particular-- you can also

00:29:08   do this on your phone.

00:29:09   It's a little rough on a phone.

00:29:12   You have the ability to go in and basically just use

00:29:15   your Mac on your device.

00:29:17   You can do this from a Mac, or in this case,

00:29:19   you can do it-- doing it from an iPad Pro

00:29:21   is surprisingly not that bad to use.

00:29:23   If you've got to go in and do something where you need the interface and you're not real

00:29:26   comfortable with the terminal, the reason I mention it here is I believe it is rumored

00:29:30   that screens 4 will add a fantastic feature, which is the ability to automatically log

00:29:35   you in.

00:29:36   You won't have to enter, like, your good password over the VNC, that it'll be able to remember

00:29:41   that for you.

00:29:42   So, it's an app I like a lot.

00:29:44   It's one of those apps where it's almost like PDF pen, where, like, when I have to use it,

00:29:50   I'm usually really frustrated and when I use it, I really want that tool and it really, really works.

00:29:55   I've got one more piece of follow-up, but before I do that, let me tell you about one of our fine sponsors in this episode of Upgrade.

00:30:03   This is the job that, it's a heavy lifting that Myke usually does, but I'm going to do it.

00:30:07   And I can do that because I've actually used this product and I like it.

00:30:09   This episode of Upgrade brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform, over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business technology and creative skills

00:30:19   for a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com, that's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade. Now

00:30:26   lynda.com, basically if you can think about it, there's probably a course on lynda.com

00:30:32   that will teach it to you. And they get experts, they get experts in the field, they get experts

00:30:37   who actually have been involved in building the tools. This is not something, speaking

00:30:42   of things that Apple doesn't do, this is not something that Apple does, but some people

00:30:45   like experts on the Adobe software and I think Microsoft software are under embargo and build

00:30:53   all these courses and then the new version of creative suite comes out and there are

00:30:56   Linda dot com courses almost right away about them which is incredibly impressive. I took

00:31:02   a bunch of courses in using logic to edit podcasts because it's a music tool and although

00:31:07   I'm sort of self-taught with logic there are so many buttons that I am afraid to press

00:31:12   fear that I will do. I have gotten in some very very bad situations with logic

00:31:17   where I'm like, "Why are, why when I change this track does this track get louder?

00:31:22   That doesn't make any sense to me. They're totally separate." Apparently I

00:31:25   pressed a letter on my keyboard at some point. Logic is really great about that, too.

00:31:29   Now you're ducking. It doesn't have modifier track or keys for everything.

00:31:33   Sometimes it's just like, "Oh, you press D." So the logic courses were really great

00:31:38   because those are people who actually know how to use it, and I was able to

00:31:41   to dive in and Lynda's .com courses, the way they work, they're really like chapterized

00:31:47   and stuff so you can sit back and watch a whole course on a subject or you can just

00:31:50   jump to the solution to your problem and I've used them in both contexts and I really like

00:31:54   that, that you can sit back and you're taking a course from an expert or you can use it

00:31:58   more like you would search the web for an answer to your problem. Instead, you can search

00:32:06   Linda's library and go to the lynda.com course on that subject and click and boom, you're

00:32:12   at the, you know, 20 minutes in or 15 minutes in where it's got the actual answer and it's

00:32:16   on screen and the experts showing you how it's done and I've had those moments numerous

00:32:21   times on lynda.com where I'm like, "Oh, it's so simple. A child could do it," but I was

00:32:26   completely incapable of doing it before I was able to see it in front of me. So this

00:32:31   This is all possible with lynda.com membership. You get the top experts. The videos are very

00:32:37   high quality. They have a whole studio. It's not these shaky cam videos that you might

00:32:42   find on YouTube. They've got course transcripts so you can follow along. You can save playlists

00:32:49   so you can save them for later if you don't have time now to watch video. You can customize

00:32:53   that and even share them with friends or co-workers. If you're on a team that's trying to learn

00:32:59   something, you can kind of curate a playlist, and you can even watch and download courses

00:33:04   to Android and iOS devices and learn wherever you are. So your lynda.com membership gives

00:33:10   you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate. Go to lynda.com,

00:33:17   l-y-n-d-a dot com slash upgrade and sign up for your free 10-day trial. That's l-y-n-d-a

00:33:22   dot com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to lynda.com for teaching me not to press the

00:33:27   the D key and logic and supporting upgrade.

00:33:30   Great service.

00:33:32   It really is.

00:33:33   This is just some amazing content there.

00:33:35   I like to, I like to go to the video that is most interesting to me.

00:33:38   Start with the one that even if it's over your head a little bit is most

00:33:41   interesting to you and if you, if you don't know what's going on, work backwards.

00:33:45   I mean, it's great cause you can go through them in order, but I also, I love

00:33:48   the idea, like you said, of how they break it down into pieces where it doesn't feel

00:33:51   like a death March, it doesn't feel like you're going to have to like sit here and

00:33:53   eat your vegetables, you can go and try to learn just the thing you want.

00:33:56   And then if you are confused about something because of the way they are so carefully broken up,

00:34:00   you will very likely be able to go, "Oh, what does ducking even mean?"

00:34:03   I will go back to this section where ducking was.

00:34:04   I had that moment where I was like, "Yes, adding compression to a sidechain.

00:34:09   That sounds really exciting. Let's do that."

00:34:11   I was kind of envisioning like a motorcycle with a sidecar or something.

00:34:16   And then I started listening to that and I was like, "Oh no, let's back up."

00:34:18   Because I was in too deep.

00:34:20   - Back, screech. - Back it up a little bit.

00:34:23   But yeah, great service.

00:34:25   Hey, my last piece of follow-out is John Syracuse and not approved, but it's to Reconcilable

00:34:31   Differences, your podcast with John, which you mentioned earlier, Episode 14. You guys

00:34:35   talk about fashion stuff and that got mentioned on ATP last week as well. I just wanted to

00:34:41   say it made me laugh, this idea of the John Syracuse, a paper doll, because a friend of

00:34:47   mine, my friend Andrea in college, used to refer to me as a paper doll.

00:34:53   your outfits are so diverse? No, because any outfit beyond my default appeared to be temporary

00:35:07   and uncomfortable. Like an appearance in court? So, basically, so Andrea was a friend of mine

00:35:15   the first couple years in college and then she transferred, and my family just visited

00:35:19   her on our summer vacation. We drove past where she lives and we dropped in and saw

00:35:25   her and her family. But for a couple of years, we're in the dorms together. So we saw each

00:35:30   other all the time and you're living with these people. So they don't just see you when

00:35:34   you're out in public because you're, you know, either there is no privacy, you could view

00:35:39   it that way, or you could view it as that the dorm floor is an extended family. But

00:35:43   But regardless, she discovered, being a very savvy person, that I was at home wearing shorts

00:35:52   and a t-shirt and probably no shoes, on the dorm floor anyway.

00:35:59   And so then she would see me with a collared shirt and a sweater and jeans or khakis walking

00:36:06   about or at a college function or something like, "Oh, the Dean's having a reception."

00:36:13   reception for the college and you're invited and you're going to come and like, all right,

00:36:17   fine. And she said, yeah, it's just like they just took that sweater and they just pressed

00:36:21   it over you temporarily. Like, yeah, totally legit. But the truth was that lurking underneath

00:36:26   it at all times was the default, which was the shorts and the T-shirt, which is totally

00:36:31   true, totally completely accurate.

00:36:32   - So embarrassing. Whenever I have to go anywhere, like I do a monthly comedy thing with Scott

00:36:36   Simpson and I'll put on a pair of pants that mostly don't have holes and I'll put on a

00:36:40   shirt with a collar and my daughter will say, "Daddy, why are you so fancy?" I'd be like,

00:36:44   "Fancy? I'm wearing blue jeans and a shirt." And I realize it's because I really do kind

00:36:48   of look like a hobo most days. That's the paper doll. Well, it was nice. What was his

00:36:52   name? David Galletly, I think his name was, was very kind to actually make a Photoshop

00:36:58   file where you can go and dress up John Siracusa however you want. It's every boy and girl's

00:37:04   dream.

00:37:05   He jumped on it fast, too, because our podcast, sometimes co-conspirator, Mr. Philip Mosolak,

00:37:12   was definitely working.

00:37:13   He posted some sketches of his own John Siracusa paper doll drawings in the Incomparable Slack

00:37:18   chat that were pretty funny, too.

00:37:21   So I feel for John.

00:37:22   He's like, "Stop drawing me!"

00:37:24   "SpongeBob, stop picturing me in underpants!"

00:37:30   But anyway, so paper doll, I feel you is what I'm saying.

00:37:33   I totally get it.

00:37:34   Totally get it. Are you a fellow? Are you a fellow non-combatant? Uh,

00:37:37   Yeah, yeah, no I and what I realized is

00:37:42   that I had to embrace it that I I I fought it for a long time and felt guilty about it and

00:37:50   And I remember like in high school in high school, you know, I wore it was the 80s

00:37:56   I wore the I wore the the long sleeve button-up shirt with a sweater

00:38:01   that was sort of my thing and then but but even then I would be like I'd unbutton the the

00:38:07   The sleeves and roll them up because I couldn't bear it and you roll them up over the sweater

00:38:12   No, no, I would take off the sweater and roll up the sleeves or I'd push up the sweater sleeves

00:38:19   I can buy the rolled up sweater sleeve. No, no, no

00:38:22   Very troubling you'll ruin your sweater that way too. Absolutely, but I

00:38:27   Just I was I rebelled against it and then you go to work

00:38:31   and you're like, "Well, I gotta wear the work clothes."

00:38:34   And fortunately, being in both journalism and technology,

00:38:38   the dress code for those things on the West Coast,

00:38:40   not high, not for either of those, right?

00:38:43   So I got away with jeans from the beginning.

00:38:46   I wore jeans to work.

00:38:47   But I had button-up shirts, I had polo shirts.

00:38:53   And, you know, ten years in, I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans,

00:38:58   And I realized this is essentially what I wore to kindergarten.

00:39:02   [laughter]

00:39:04   And this is my default.

00:39:06   And the jeans are only because people would make fun of me if I wore, uh, like, a pair of, like, sweat shorts to work.

00:39:12   Which is what I would have preferred to do.

00:39:14   Yeah, when you're playing at that level.

00:39:16   And now you work in your own garage, so sky's the limit.

00:39:18   That's right. On, uh, this—well, now that we're in, uh, in Season B here in California,

00:39:24   I usually will wear pants out here.

00:39:27   here but in season A it's shorts, absolutely, during season A. So yeah, paper doll, it's

00:39:33   a true thing. You have to admit it. Now John is very special about this because John essentially

00:39:38   just has, like Steve Jobs with the turtlenecks, John's just got the rugby shirt.

00:39:44   -He's the king of rugby, yeah, no question. -Yeah. But for me, just a kind of shirt.

00:39:48   -I feel bad. He was a very good sport about it. I was not trying to take the Mickey out

00:39:53   of him and I was just kind of playfully jostling but I should have realized knowing how Syracuse,

00:39:59   how viral the John Siracusa product is, I should have known that this would happen but

00:40:03   I apologize because I did not mean to make him an object of scorn but people love him.

00:40:07   What are you going to do?

00:40:08   Yeah, it's not scorn. It's love, right?

00:40:09   Oh, it's affection. People want to see him look like an angry professor. Like, who wouldn't

00:40:12   want to see that?

00:40:13   It's true. Hey, we should talk about the Apple TV.

00:40:16   Yeah.

00:40:17   We had Joe Steele on a couple weeks ago and he was very grumpy and we got a lot of feedback

00:40:21   saying, "Wow, that guy's grumpy."

00:40:22   - "This is upgrade, everybody's gonna get all mad, I forgot."

00:40:24   (laughing)

00:40:25   "Oh, that's right, everyone gets mad when you're honest."

00:40:27   Ah, that's right.

00:40:28   - Yeah, I know, it's a hard thing, it's tricky.

00:40:31   - So let's skip the discussion of setup.

00:40:33   (laughing)

00:40:34   - I think we beat that one to death.

00:40:36   It's not that good, it's not that good.

00:40:39   Some people had not as bad a condition as I did,

00:40:42   where I was told-- - And their passwords suck.

00:40:44   - "Go to a computer."

00:40:45   I had that again, I had that again.

00:40:47   I let my iTunes match subscription lapse,

00:40:50   because I'm an Apple Music subscriber right now.

00:40:52   And I love iTunes Match, but there's no point in having it

00:40:56   and Apple Music, as far as I can tell,

00:40:58   as long because Apple Music includes the ability

00:41:01   to scan and upload things, I believe.

00:41:04   If not, I'll be turning it back on.

00:41:06   - Jason, I hate to admit, I've tried to learn it,

00:41:09   and I'm still so confused about what does what.

00:41:12   All I know is I get a pop-up now

00:41:14   that I've reached my limit on iTunes Match.

00:41:16   Every time I open iTunes, it tells me--

00:41:18   - They said by the end of the year,

00:41:19   to fix the limit but they haven't yet. But my point is not about that particular rabbit hole

00:41:23   to go down it. I specifically decided to let it lapse, figuring this would uncover whether I need

00:41:29   it or not. And then, like, I mean, I've got all my music. I can just re-up if I need to. But the

00:41:35   point was that I ran into the same thing I ran into with my Apple TV setup where I got an email

00:41:38   from Apple that said, "Your iTunes match subscription is about to lapse. If you would like to

00:41:44   to renew it go to your computer and launch iTunes and renew iTunes match

00:41:52   didn't it I mean but I remember right it's something like it was like

00:41:55   implying your your credit card was weird or something wasn't it giving you some

00:41:59   kind of flag about so on Apple TV it was it asked me for my security code on my

00:42:04   credit card and I can't decide whether that was because the the something in

00:42:09   the back end information about the credit card changed or they hadn't

00:42:12   verified it in a certain amount of time or what, or because I have more security turned

00:42:16   on in my account. I don't know the reason, but it said, you know, "You need to go to

00:42:21   your computer, to iTunes, click on your account, then click on 'Edit Account Information,'

00:42:29   and then enter in your security code," which seemed kind of a bit far. But I had the same

00:42:34   idea when I saw the iTunes Match thing, which just kind of blew me away. See, here we are

00:42:38   not talking about set up by talking about said it but but I feel like

00:42:42   Apple as a maker of the iPhone should probably never send an email that says

00:42:46   go to your computer

00:42:48   when it actually raises a a question I can't believe I hadn't thought of before

00:42:52   a what do you do if you don't have a computer now well

00:42:55   find a friend I mean honestly I mean I'm asking honestly like to me

00:42:58   Apple TV is up there as one of the

00:43:02   potentially one of the gateway devices right the kind of thing I can I like an

00:43:04   iPhone or a an iPod

00:43:06   is the kind of thing where you all give us a crowd i think i think they figure

00:43:09   you know what i did match you probably a computer because you you you've read

00:43:12   your files and all that and apple t_v_ figure you probably got a computer

00:43:16   somewhere and if you don't you probably don't even have an apple i_d_ right a

00:43:19   you know so if you if u

00:43:21   if you're you get into this word that weird circumstance then you've probably

00:43:25   got a computer i can see it it's just

00:43:27   to be told you're on this device no no go to a computer which used to be like

00:43:31   all right well yeah that's where i go because uh... what else where else would

00:43:34   go and the answer now is well I could go to my phone or my iPad. Anyway the setup it was

00:43:39   mixed bag. But now that it's up and running I've been I've been using it a lot. Have you

00:43:45   been using it a lot? Yeah absolutely. Yeah I'd love to talk about that. I mean it's always

00:43:50   fun to talk about the stuff as soon as it comes out but the way you really learn whether

00:43:53   you like it or not is using it for a while so yeah I would love to talk about that. Yeah

00:43:57   I have the um so for me I've been fairly positive about it. I still get frustrated by the track

00:44:04   pad sometimes. I, I, where, where it goes, also when I first started it like has to detect

00:44:13   that the remote is there so I'm like clicking and, and swiping furiously and nothing's happening

00:44:17   and then it goes connected and then it goes and it swipes everywhere. I'm like no, stop,

00:44:22   no. But, but things that I liked about it like I've got Plex running on it which is

00:44:27   a lot of fun because I used to have files that needed to be, that were not in a supported

00:44:31   format for the Apple TV. And I realize what's happening with Plex is that the Plex server

00:44:34   is basically transcoding it to something that the Apple TV will play, but I don't have to

00:44:38   do it, and I think that's kind of nice.

00:44:40   Yeah, absolutely. Plex is the killer app for me, and it is, um, well, it's funny. As the

00:44:46   Apple TV previous editions got a little long in the tooth, I found myself, my affections

00:44:52   moving more to the Amazon Fire TV, um, which is tough competition for Apple, to be honest,

00:44:58   because it is blazingly fast.

00:45:01   And Plex, if you have a Plex server running

00:45:05   on a pretty fast Mac and you're using Amazon Fire TV,

00:45:09   to go from zero to something is so much faster

00:45:12   on Amazon Fire TV.

00:45:14   I have to say, and I'd love to mention this

00:45:16   just a little bit, even today it's so much faster.

00:45:18   To go from everything is off to everything is on

00:45:21   to stuff is running.

00:45:22   You know, the basic John Sira, he's a test.

00:45:23   How long does it take to go from nothing being on

00:45:26   to me watching the show I want to watch?

00:45:28   So that's, I got really spoiled with the Fire TV.

00:45:31   I was able to look past some of the interface stuff.

00:45:34   But you know, now, however many weeks in,

00:45:36   I mean, there's a lot I really do like about it.

00:45:39   But that, what I like about it has come from

00:45:42   a somewhat forceful retraining,

00:45:43   sort of similar to how I'm trying to use my iPad Pro,

00:45:47   is kind of forcing myself to say,

00:45:49   look, hey, how does this thing want to be used?

00:45:51   Instead of like, what do I expect it to do?

00:45:53   That seems like a pretty smart approach.

00:45:55   When you get, you know, in this case,

00:45:57   fairly different interface with some cues. I'm talking here about Siri. They

00:46:01   really want you to use Siri on this thing. And so that's really what I've

00:46:04   been trying to spend my time on. Yeah, and I'd be going any direction you want.

00:46:09   There's a lot I mean there's a lot I like about the Siri part, a lot that's

00:46:12   frustrating. The remote continues to drive me a little crazy for the same

00:46:17   boring reason as ever, which is it is difficult to tell which end is which.

00:46:20   I've gotten to where I do sort of automatically look. Is the long

00:46:24   button on the right. Okay, yes, then I have it in the right direction because that means

00:46:27   the volume is on the right.

00:46:28   I do the shiny test when I'm picking it up. It's laying on the table. Is it the shiny

00:46:35   one? Touch the shiny part. The shiny part won't mess you up by being the touch, the

00:46:40   track pad. So pick it up by the shiny part. That's my test.

00:46:45   But I'm forever, I mean, still, I'm forever scrubbing. And luckily, scrubbing doesn't

00:46:50   go until you hit the button but I still find myself scrubbing all over the screen just

00:46:55   like putting the thing down or picking it up or moving it or honestly just even like

00:46:58   having it on the couch you know there's like these glancing blows but there is a lot I

00:47:02   like it's a very 1.0 thing.

00:47:04   I think you put this really well you said you can't really think you really need to

00:47:08   think of this as a 1.0 because it's such a rethinking it looks a lot the same but so

00:47:13   much is different under the hood and so much is different with what Siri will mean to how

00:47:17   we use this. So I'm trying to be sanguine about that and take that as my approach of

00:47:22   like learning how to adapt to how this thing wants to be used. And even then it's a little

00:47:28   tricky sometimes, but I'm generally happy, I think.

00:47:33   If you're watching a video and you accidentally swipe on the trackpad, is there a button to

00:47:38   press that like undoes it and just makes it go away and it continues to play? Can you

00:47:42   menu out of that?

00:47:44   I think menu, see this is, I thought I had this.

00:47:47   - I haven't done it 'cause I'm too terrified.

00:47:49   - I know, I know, 'cause you're gonna lose your place

00:47:50   or whatever.

00:47:51   And then of course there is also,

00:47:52   unlike the third generation,

00:47:55   this one has a strange sense of place.

00:47:57   It used to be that whenever you menued out of an app

00:47:59   and then went back to that app, you start at the top,

00:48:02   and now you end up on the detail page of wherever,

00:48:05   say you were on a detail page for a show inside of Plex,

00:48:07   that's where you go back to.

00:48:09   So now you have to menu inside the app.

00:48:12   It's a different paradigm

00:48:13   that takes some getting used to.

00:48:14   But I, so, I, at first I got really confused

00:48:17   because, that's my style.

00:48:19   I got really confused because I kept scrubbing accidentally

00:48:21   or causing something to happen just by glancing blows

00:48:24   on the touch pad.

00:48:25   Then I heard from somebody, well actually don't sweat that

00:48:27   because as long as you don't press the button

00:48:30   after you scrub, it won't start playing at that point.

00:48:33   And then I feel like I heard somebody say

00:48:35   if you hit menu at that point, it'll go away.

00:48:39   But, like I've hit menu, I feel like I've hit menu

00:48:41   when I've done that and gone out of the show.

00:48:43   I feel like maybe like flipping up and down.

00:48:46   Basically, I'm pissing on a spark plug to quote "WarGames."

00:48:48   I would just try anything just on the pad

00:48:50   to see if it makes the interface go away.

00:48:53   But I don't actually know the official way

00:48:55   to get out of that.

00:48:57   - Yeah, I had a few cases where I pressed the buttons

00:48:59   and I'm sort of like nothing is happening

00:49:00   and then everything is happening,

00:49:01   which suggests that something is lagging there,

00:49:04   which this is pretty impressive hardware.

00:49:05   It probably shouldn't do that,

00:49:06   but you could probably chalk some of that up

00:49:08   to the fact that it is buggy and new

00:49:11   and presumably they're working on that, one would hope.

00:49:15   But I definitely have had those instances

00:49:18   where it feels a little laggy.

00:49:21   The Siri search has been kind of nice.

00:49:23   I have the Fire TV Stick,

00:49:24   and so I don't have the microphone remote on Fire TV.

00:49:29   - Okay.

00:49:30   - So this was my first experience with the kind of TV.

00:49:33   Well, I mean, we've got an Xbox,

00:49:35   but the Xbox voice control stuff is,

00:49:39   I don't even want to try it

00:49:40   because it's such a, it's really annoying.

00:49:42   'Cause it's sort of like,

00:49:44   (sighs)

00:49:46   Microsoft wants you to interact with it

00:49:47   in a very particular way,

00:49:48   and I just wanna play a game or something,

00:49:51   and I just have never even bothered to spend time with it,

00:49:54   'cause it just seems really annoying to me.

00:49:57   But with the Siri thing, I've been sitting on the couch

00:50:00   and thinking, I could go to the movies,

00:50:04   and I could type in something with search,

00:50:06   but I don't need to do that.

00:50:08   Let's hold this down and do it.

00:50:09   And I have enjoyed that.

00:50:12   I have enjoyed being able to say,

00:50:13   we were looking for a movie just the other day.

00:50:15   And I pressed the button and said,

00:50:19   show me the movie The Lion in Winter,

00:50:21   and it jumped right there, which I was pretty happy with.

00:50:25   I thought that was a pretty good feature.

00:50:26   - It's pretty good.

00:50:27   It gets a little bit tripped up on,

00:50:29   what's the word, homonyms,

00:50:31   which is understandable, understandable.

00:50:32   But I've had good luck with, I mostly use it for,

00:50:37   My daughter really likes the Adele song "Skyfall" from the movie.

00:50:41   And I let her watch a few minutes of the beginning of "Skyfall" because it's not horribly violent.

00:50:45   But I really like the credits sequence.

00:50:46   I just say, you know, hit the button and say, "Find 'Skyfall.'"

00:50:50   And it's pretty good at that.

00:50:51   It pulls it right up.

00:50:52   Movies?

00:50:53   Pretty good.

00:50:54   Because with a movie, if you think about the hierarchy, here's the hierarchy mostly.

00:50:59   Is you say, you know, find whatever, the exorcist or whatever.

00:51:05   And so a page comes up, a detailed page comes up for the movie and then the options I think

00:51:10   are things you've bought or can buy on iTunes, Hulu and Netflix.

00:51:16   And is HBO on there as well, Showtime?

00:51:18   I'm not sure.

00:51:20   I think maybe HBO is on there.

00:51:21   I don't see them on there much, but for us it's usually Hulu and Netflix.

00:51:25   And so for a movie it's actually pretty great.

00:51:27   A movie is very simple and they do that very well.

00:51:30   I think that part I don't really have much qualm with.

00:51:33   I think they've done great.

00:51:34   TV shows are complicated in a lot of ways on the TV, I think.

00:51:38   Because one of the things is-- and this is not Apple's fault.

00:51:40   So you say, for example, you say, find Doctor Who.

00:51:44   And it's going to guess what you mean.

00:51:46   And if it's something-- Doctor Who's maybe not a great example.

00:51:48   But if it's confused about what you're looking for,

00:51:50   you'll get the little pop-up at the bottom where it'll say,

00:51:52   well, which one of these is it that you want?

00:51:54   It could be a movie, it could be TV, whatever.

00:51:56   Not a problem, really.

00:51:57   But you hit the right Doctor Who, you go to it.

00:51:59   And it gets real complicated because there's

00:52:01   different seasons available in different places.

00:52:03   and then you need to drill down into that.

00:52:06   And then candidly, I've bought a lot of TV

00:52:08   on Apple iTunes Store.

00:52:11   I find the interface for going through seasons

00:52:12   of a TV show actually worse than it was before.

00:52:15   The horizontal scrolling thing is pretty rough,

00:52:19   where we had to get to a Walking Dead from this season.

00:52:23   And just in fairness, you can say, for example,

00:52:27   find Doctor Who season nine.

00:52:29   And it pretty reliably will pull up season nine.

00:52:32   But the interface is not, it's a weird side-scrolling, isn't it?

00:52:34   Like a right to left where you go through season after season after season?

00:52:37   I think so.

00:52:38   That's a little rough, but I think there's room that they could improve that.

00:52:42   But this, you know, that we can't get past, we should not overlook the miraculous part

00:52:46   that the Siri stuff actually does work.

00:52:47   Saying, you know, I can't say this one enough, you know, go forward 30 seconds, what did

00:52:52   she just say?

00:52:53   That stuff really does work and we actually use it a lot.

00:52:57   The, um...

00:52:58   For scrubbing.

00:52:59   Yeah, the thing that I tripped it up with, like you said, it's homonyms, it's things

00:53:05   that are words that sound like other words, so to speak, where I was asking for "You're

00:53:11   the worst," and I think I offended Siri.

00:53:15   I don't know how to do that.

00:53:16   I think Siri thought that I was decrying Siri and all that she stands for, but I was just

00:53:21   wanting to watch the TV show "You're the Worst."

00:53:23   So I rephrased it as something like, "Show me the TV show, you're the worst," and then

00:53:29   she got it.

00:53:30   But it took that extra little, "Let's add some verbiage to give you more information

00:53:35   about what I'm actually searching for," which you don't do when you're typing it, because

00:53:40   you know what you're searching for, but you have to give it a little spin in order sometimes

00:53:44   for it to understand what you're saying.

00:53:46   And then the frustrating thing is that you can't use it in enough places yet.

00:53:52   I mean that actually is funny which is it's such a great feature.

00:53:55   I use it so much on the phone for Apple Music.

00:53:58   And there's no music connection in Apple TV. It's madness because I actually tried to do that the other night.

00:54:03   I wanted to play a playlist and on my phone I can do it with, you know, I can just call out, shuffle this playlist and boom it's done.

00:54:10   It's just not there yet.

00:54:11   Well yeah, something I said to Jim a few times on the Down Ripple Report show we do is I love, how do I put this?

00:54:20   I love the catalog and I love the service, but all the different ways of using it are

00:54:24   each one is more perplexing than the last to me.

00:54:26   So I almost always, I'm like an old man.

00:54:28   I always end up just going and searching for something and then finding it.

00:54:31   Because then once I'm there, I have no idea how do I locate what album this is on?

00:54:34   Is the album available in America?

00:54:36   Why is Skyfall not available on this collection?

00:54:38   That's really weird.

00:54:39   You know, there's all these kinds of things that I do end up doing that searching a lot.

00:54:43   And I think I will use that tons once it's available on Apple TV.

00:54:48   But again, back to our earlier point, doesn't this potentially go to show more of what we

00:54:53   talked about before?

00:54:54   The silos and the resource constraints?

00:54:56   I'm just guessing there was a meeting at some point where they said, "You know what?

00:54:59   It's not going to be ready.

00:55:00   The Siri integration is not going to be there for Apple Music on day one."

00:55:03   And it's, this is, I mean, there's been so much speculation and I don't think anybody

00:55:08   knows the truth who's talking, but there's been a lot of speculation that this perhaps

00:55:13   is a side effect of the strange route that this product took to being available, where

00:55:19   rumor has it that a lot of this stuff was done a long time ago, relatively speaking,

00:55:24   and has sat on the shelf because they wanted to make deals. And so there's a lot of speculation

00:55:28   about was the software--

00:55:31   You're saying basically that team got moved somewhere else.

00:55:33   Right. I mean, that's the speculation. And I've heard nothing direct to confirm or deny

00:55:37   that, but I've heard rumors that one of the problems with this product as it currently

00:55:42   exists is that it didn't have your usual kind of through line where the whole team was working

00:55:46   on it and they finished it and they shipped it, but that it sort of like got stalled.

00:55:50   I'm not sure whether it got stalled and what they considered finished or not, and it may

00:55:55   very well be that it got finished and then it sat there for a while. And the only reason

00:56:00   that I keep bringing that up as a possibility is it explains things like why Apple Music

00:56:05   Integration isn't there and why iCloud Photo Library isn't there.

00:56:10   That's so strange. Because those are both initiatives from 2015.

00:56:14   Yeah. And I had somebody say to me,

00:56:18   "Oh well, you know, iCloud Photo Library is new." It was announced

00:56:21   publicly in like March. And

00:56:24   it's been, and the first version of it shipped with the OS update in

00:56:29   April, I think it was, maybe May. It was a while ago.

00:56:32   It's been public for a long time, so even the people working on the Apple TV,

00:56:35   theoretically,

00:56:36   would have heard about it a long time ago. And yet there's nothing in there.

00:56:39   there's photo stream and shared stuff, but that's not iCloud photo library.

00:56:43   But that's a major new like cloud initiative from Apple and the product

00:56:47   doesn't support it out of the box.

00:56:48   That's, you know, there may be reasons, but it just, it's weird.

00:56:52   And, and Apple music the same way.

00:56:53   It's like, this is Apple's huge push into music.

00:56:56   The subscription service, they've spent so much effort pushing it.

00:56:59   And, and although there is an Apple music app on this device, which is

00:57:03   great because the old device didn't have it, which was also weird.

00:57:07   But so it's great that the apps there, but it's it lacks the Siri integration that the TV and movies

00:57:13   have which and that the phones have, which is just it's one of those things of like, I don't know why

00:57:19   this would be that they wouldn't have have built this into this product. It would seem to be on the

00:57:23   list of features that would just have to be there on day one. And there's got to be a story there

00:57:28   that we'll never hear. But it's just a little baffling. And again, you can you can look at that

00:57:33   two ways. You can say, look, it's a one point oh product. It'll get better. They'll work on it. And

00:57:37   And then you can also look at it as, you know,

00:57:39   right now it means that product is not as good

00:57:41   as it should be, because right now,

00:57:43   those features aren't there.

00:57:45   - Yep.

00:57:46   - It's a weird product.

00:57:48   It's weird because there's so much interesting

00:57:50   and good about it, and then there's so much

00:57:51   that's kind of baffling.

00:57:52   And I haven't, there hasn't been an Apple product

00:57:55   in a while that's had this mix of both of those things.

00:57:59   - Well, you know, gosh, what's the phrase

00:58:02   from the Christopher Nolan movie, you know, "The Prestige"?

00:58:05   Like there's the promise and the prestige

00:58:07   and you know, there's all the parts.

00:58:08   But the funny part is with Apple,

00:58:10   they are so good at figuring out this idea for something

00:58:13   that if and when implemented well,

00:58:17   will make a demonstrable improvement in how you work

00:58:20   or how much you enjoy using those devices.

00:58:22   It just seems like, and I don't mean to beat up,

00:58:25   but it does seem like at a certain point,

00:58:26   it's funny how scattered the implementation can be.

00:58:31   Because when they're on stage talking about it,

00:58:33   I mean, part of the reason that people like us

00:58:35   are so, like, such sad sacks sometimes

00:58:37   is 'cause we bought it.

00:58:38   We bought the promise.

00:58:40   We bought the idea of, like,

00:58:41   what this effect is going to be.

00:58:42   Now we wanna see it.

00:58:44   And so when you get something like the photo stuff,

00:58:46   photos are very personal to people.

00:58:48   Music, man, Jim Dalrymple takes his music

00:58:50   extremely seriously.

00:58:51   More than maybe might be sane,

00:58:53   but, like, that really means a lot.

00:58:55   I mean, our friend Steven has been having some problems

00:58:57   this weekend with losing some photos.

00:58:59   Like, you know, those things mean a lot.

00:59:02   And so it seems like a natural fit, as you say,

00:59:05   to like, when you flip this thing on,

00:59:07   you get a first run experience,

00:59:08   you've put in all of your data,

00:59:09   how great would it be to have your,

00:59:11   put in your Apple ID information,

00:59:13   and like you instantly see pictures of your kids,

00:59:15   you instantly see the movies that you bought,

00:59:17   you know, all those kinds of things.

00:59:18   So when we, you know, kind of piss and moan

00:59:20   about the first run experience on this,

00:59:22   it's partly that I can very easily imagine

00:59:25   how what feels like a relatively,

00:59:28   I don't wanna make it sound easy,

00:59:29   I know single sign-on is not easy,

00:59:31   But there's a part of me that thinks,

00:59:32   like this thing is gonna be a real banger,

00:59:35   especially when that stuff gets settled.

00:59:37   And let's be honest, you know,

00:59:39   there's still this part of me that thinks

00:59:41   the Apple Music announcement still felt so weird

00:59:45   to me on stage. - Oh, so weird.

00:59:46   - And it really felt like, in my gut,

00:59:48   I think they wanted to announce, guess what?

00:59:50   Cable TV is coming to your living room,

00:59:53   but it's not gonna come from a cable.

00:59:54   And I think it didn't work out on time.

00:59:56   I don't know, it's just my gut, it's just my gut,

00:59:59   'cause that felt like such a weird presentation.

01:00:01   Imagine this box replacing coaxial cable for your TV.

01:00:05   Suddenly, you look at it really differently.

01:00:09   When that piece gets on there, we

01:00:10   might look at this thing very differently,

01:00:11   and this interface might make a lot more sense.

01:00:13   Do you know what I mean?

01:00:14   I've said for a long time that you should never

01:00:16   buy a product based on the promise of what it might add

01:00:19   later in terms of features.

01:00:20   And that comes from a history of buying things,

01:00:22   and they say, no, no, no, it's going to do that later.

01:00:24   And it turns out that that gets delayed,

01:00:25   and then it turns out that they're

01:00:26   going to do a new version of the hardware that has it,

01:00:28   and that the old version might get it later,

01:00:30   and then the old version doesn't get it.

01:00:32   That happened so many times, I cannot tell you how many times.

01:00:34   You can never say, oh well, I'm sure this will be upgradeable

01:00:37   later to this other thing that they say that they're doing.

01:00:40   You really need to judge it based

01:00:41   on what the product is today.

01:00:42   The only reason I don't do that to a great extent

01:00:45   with the Apple TV is that this is very clearly Apple's TV

01:00:48   platform probably for the next five years,

01:00:51   some version of this.

01:00:52   So I do think most of this stuff is coming.

01:00:55   I think as people who talk about Apple

01:00:58   and try to figure out what Apple's doing

01:00:59   and where it's going because we like the products

01:01:02   because we think it's important

01:01:03   because we think this is one of the ways

01:01:05   that the industry changes and that our futures change.

01:01:08   There are lots of reasons why we talk about

01:01:11   and analyze and criticize what Apple does.

01:01:13   This product is particularly interesting because of that

01:01:16   because I think it is the worst case scenario in some ways

01:01:20   about all the different tendrils about Apple's ambition

01:01:25   and about Apple's limitations

01:01:27   and it's all mushed up together.

01:01:29   So Apple's ambition is to have this totally mind-blowing TV service that doesn't require

01:01:35   TV anymore, but they haven't been able to make the deals.

01:01:37   And their ambition is to have this amazing music service, but they couldn't get that

01:01:42   implementation on all their devices, so the Apple TV doesn't have it yet.

01:01:46   And their ambition with the photo library is to have it be that your photos are accessible

01:01:51   everywhere and it just syncs to the cloud and it just works and it's great, but they've

01:01:55   had problems with that.

01:01:57   And you know, the way that they're structured, sometimes I wonder that you were talking about

01:02:04   the silos, sometimes I wonder about, obviously, parts of this business work incredibly well

01:02:09   and are incredibly efficient, and some of them appear to be not able to run that fast.

01:02:15   And we talked about it a lot in the context of hardware versus software.

01:02:18   But I think it's also true of the online services stuff where, you know, sometimes you get so

01:02:23   so used to the way that Apple's supply chain works and their hardware design works where

01:02:27   I think you could very easily argue that they're better than anyone at the world at it by far,

01:02:33   like way out in front of everyone else. We know that they can be, but again, times of

01:02:37   confusion, right? It's like you guys have talked about this in lots of different places,

01:02:41   how odd it is that there'll be the announcement that something's coming and then like an announcement

01:02:47   about when you can order it in the future and then the announcement about when it will

01:02:50   actually arrive and that is mysterious because they do control at some point

01:02:57   they controlled all those dates but I feel I feel like what you're yeah I

01:03:01   think that is sometimes a symptom of the fact that Apple is so ambitious on the

01:03:05   hardware side and they're trying so many new things that sometimes they you know

01:03:09   they're they're out on the cutting edge and sometimes they get bitten by a

01:03:12   problem and they're like oh man we gotta do that but I but still in the end like

01:03:17   the build quality of their hardware is really good.

01:03:21   Greg Canig did that post about how people don't understand

01:03:24   that Apple is probably the company that's best in the world

01:03:27   at aluminum, like at aluminum.

01:03:29   (laughs)

01:03:30   - Oh, right, that was a great post, yeah.

01:03:32   - Like machining aluminum and all that.

01:03:34   And so there are all these areas where I would say

01:03:36   that Apple is an A or A+ kind of company.

01:03:39   The problem with that is that Apple is so ambitious

01:03:41   that they're also doing, unlike most companies,

01:03:43   they're also doing the software stuff

01:03:45   and the services stuff and all this other,

01:03:48   and making deals with content companies.

01:03:50   And those parts of the business,

01:03:52   not A to A+ level work a lot of the time.

01:03:56   And I think that's a really interesting problem for them

01:04:00   of like, how do you get the other parts of your business

01:04:02   to be able to run at the pace of the hardware?

01:04:05   'Cause the hardware is there.

01:04:07   And I feel sometimes like the hardware

01:04:08   is dragging the software along

01:04:11   and the services aren't even dragging anymore.

01:04:15   They're just, sometimes they're just by the side of the road.

01:04:17   Yeah.

01:04:18   I don't know.

01:04:19   You probably need to do a break here, huh?

01:04:21   I do.

01:04:21   I do.

01:04:22   Let's talk, let's talk about mail.

01:04:23   Hey, tell me about something you like.

01:04:24   Let's talk about mail route.

01:04:26   How about that?

01:04:27   And I, and I've got a little bit of a hashtag ask upgrade to happen in the middle

01:04:32   of the mail route ad, which is listener Myke, uh, wrote in Mr.

01:04:36   Myke Hurley wrote in to say, can you please say mail bagging?

01:04:39   So when, when we just pay attention, Merlin, that's what I'm saying.

01:04:42   I will.

01:04:43   This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by MailRoute. Email, very important to all

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01:06:13   mail server, which used to be called MailShare, and I actually had to stop doing that because

01:06:17   the amount of spam that was connecting to my DSL line was making me unable to connect

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01:06:58   you what the in-spam lines are, spam subject lines, which are, let's see, the latest one

01:07:05   a couple weeks ago was I got three or four messages that were, "You might be having

01:07:09   a heart attack." I guess they're afraid that they think people are going to be checking

01:07:15   for mail from their doctors, and I don't even know.

01:07:17   - Unusual place to share that. - I know, and yet, that was the trend, but

01:07:23   it changes, because they're always changing to other crazy subject lines that they think

01:07:27   are going to get through the spam filters, but you know what? Mail route stops them before

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01:07:40   it will deliver it and whitelist the person who sent it to you so that all their mail

01:07:44   in the future will get through. But it very rarely happens that I see anything good in

01:07:47   there. Usually, it is just for entertainment purposes that I read that. It's easy to set

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01:08:44   picture disc that's a really good deal thanks to mail route for supporting

01:08:50   upgrade and also for filtering all that spam out so that I can just be

01:08:55   entertained by the subject lines. Do you have any more about Apple TV before we go on?

01:09:00   You know, just a general observation. Not really. It can be short, but I was on a

01:09:09   show with our friend Andy Anotko talking about Project Runway. I was talking about one of the

01:09:12   things I always notice on Project Runway is that no matter how great the design

01:09:16   idea, let's start with the beginning.

01:09:19   No matter how great somebody is,

01:09:21   or thinks they are at what they do,

01:09:23   no matter how great their design is,

01:09:24   no matter how good they are at cutting patterns,

01:09:26   like what really matters is how that thing fits

01:09:29   on the model when they go down the runway.

01:09:31   And like no matter how great all those ideas were

01:09:33   along the way, and I'm always watching the person

01:09:36   who's had a lot of experience with making a garment

01:09:39   look good on a specific person.

01:09:41   And you know, this is kind of a cheaty way

01:09:43   to watch Project Runway, but the people who are fast

01:09:46   making a design that fits well, they don't have to be the most creative in the world

01:09:49   as long as their implementation is flawless. And that's the thing is that's what's weird

01:09:53   about this when you think about what Tim Cook brought to Apple in terms of operations. It's

01:09:57   like I just feel like there isn't as much sense of the garment looking great on the

01:10:02   model on runway day. And that's the part that gives me the fear just a little bit. And I

01:10:06   just want to clarify I have no intention of ever using anything but Apple stuff. I love

01:10:10   the Apple idea. I love the Apple thing. I like my Apple stuff. But you know, you get

01:10:15   you get the fear a little bit sometimes

01:10:16   'cause it feels like,

01:10:18   like there are the times where you feel like

01:10:19   this isn't really up to sort of what I expected

01:10:21   or what I would hope for,

01:10:23   but then sometimes with things like iCloud

01:10:25   or like some of the occasional disasters,

01:10:27   it just makes you think like,

01:10:29   you know, are they still making sure

01:10:31   this is the best that it could possibly be

01:10:33   and using their expertise to make something

01:10:35   that is polished on runway day.

01:10:37   And that's the times where you get that accumulation of like,

01:10:41   and I have to say with the Apple TV,

01:10:42   I still think it's very promising.

01:10:44   I think it's extremely promising.

01:10:45   I bet there's tons they can do with software,

01:10:47   tons they can do with relationships

01:10:49   that are gonna make this a better device.

01:10:50   It's certainly got the firepower.

01:10:52   Like for example, it's ironic to me that

01:10:56   the slowest thing on my Apple TV

01:10:59   is waking from sleep, stow, and starting a movie.

01:11:03   It still is appallingly slow for Apple stuff

01:11:07   where it's not for stuff from Netflix and Hulu,

01:11:09   which seems so weird to me.

01:11:12   I used to think it was just me,

01:11:13   But the beauty part is with a device like that, there is still so much hope for them

01:11:16   to make it great.

01:11:17   So I don't know if you take the analogy, but that's when people like old men like us are

01:11:22   like, "Mm, mm, mm."

01:11:23   I think it's because we feel like, gosh, when we've seen them execute so many things so

01:11:28   well, we all look at the first iPhone and go like, "How did they ever pull that off?"

01:11:32   And that's kind of what we're hoping for each time.

01:11:33   If anything, it's an overabundance of optimism about what Apple's capable of that makes us

01:11:38   kind of pick nits about the hem on the finished garment.

01:11:42   Well, in tech nerd circles, it's very easy to say because we a lot of times know what goes into making this stuff.

01:11:49   And I mean, I heard this, that was one of our reactions when Joe Steele was complaining about the Apple TV.

01:11:53   Somebody actually gave a piece of feedback, which was about how they feel bad for the people who worked really hard on the Apple TV at Apple.

01:12:02   Which is like, well, yeah, I totally, we're not saying people are bad people, but criticizing the product isn't saying that somebody's bad.

01:12:11   but sometimes you have to criticize. Sometimes the product deserves criticism. And I think

01:12:17   it's very easy for us to come up with excuses or reasons or just set the bar so high in

01:12:22   terms of the level of difficulty that you can say, "Look, you really shouldn't criticize

01:12:26   that they worked really hard." Or, "You really shouldn't criticize it. Do you know how complicated

01:12:30   it is?" Do you know what--

01:12:31   - Yeah, when's the last time you made an Apple TV?

01:12:33   - Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that is the best piece of fallacy is that--

01:12:38   Is that all you do all day is complain about what other people do?

01:12:41   The only person who can review movies is Martin Scorsese.

01:12:45   He's the only guy.

01:12:46   Right, right, right.

01:12:47   Nobody else is allowed to review movies except if you make them.

01:12:50   So my point is you can make all those excuses.

01:12:54   And there's truth inside them.

01:12:56   It is true that oftentimes what Apple is trying to do is extra complicated, whether it's on

01:13:02   the hardware or the hardware-software integration or on the services.

01:13:05   A lot of times Apple is incredibly ambitious with what it does, and it's important to not

01:13:09   lose sight of that. But at the end of the day, you are absolutely right. In the end,

01:13:14   it's about the product and the product experience. And it doesn't matter if it was hard for them

01:13:19   to do it. It does not matter if they're doing things that nobody's ever tried before. Because

01:13:25   if the experience is bad, it's a bad product. It doesn't matter what the degree of difficulty

01:13:30   It's not Olympic diving, right? It doesn't matter. Is the product good? Does it work?

01:13:35   Does it do what you promised? Does it meet expectations? No matter who set them, does

01:13:40   it meet reasonable expectations? Perhaps it doesn't meet unreasonable expectations.

01:13:44   That happens with Apple a lot. That's one way that Apple is treated unfairly. But, you know,

01:13:49   saying, "Well, the reason the Apple TV isn't, you know, maybe it deserves to be criticized,

01:13:56   but you gotta understand it was a small team and they got pulled off of it a year ago and

01:14:02   because they wanted to make these deals that fell through and boy that Les Moonvis he's

01:14:06   tough negotiator and so everything's getting slowed down and okay all that's true and it's

01:14:10   interesting but in the end that's not an excuse the product still has to deliver what they're

01:14:15   what they wanted to deliver and and and I I agree with you I think the Apple TV actually

01:14:19   has a lot of potential and there's a lot of good in it but in the end you know it you're

01:14:24   right it's about how it fits on the runway and that's how a product should

01:14:27   that's how products should be judged all products should be judged that way yep

01:14:31   speaking products you want to I've been I am still using the iPad Pro I still

01:14:38   haven't decided whether I'm gonna buy one this is my Apple review unit that

01:14:41   I'm gonna have to give back maybe next week I don't even I've got a look about

01:14:44   when they want it back which is gonna make me sad and I'm just wondering what

01:14:48   what what you've thought we've been talking about this in the whole Apple

01:14:51   podcast sphere and blogger sphere and all of those things bloggers for you're

01:14:55   not a word by the way that word not a thing not a thing what do you think about

01:15:00   about this giant iPad I've been listening in I've been listening I bought

01:15:04   one when it came out and I got my pencil yesterday I've been playing or Friday I

01:15:09   should say been playing with it you got the Apple pencil the Apple pencil okay

01:15:12   because you got a caution people don't take a real pencil and write on the

01:15:15   Apple on the I oh no you're gonna want to go ahead and definitely not do that

01:15:18   no don't it's like it's like writing with a permanent marker on a whiteboard

01:15:21   Don't do it.

01:15:22   But I'll tell you, man, every time I just think about like a little kid like getting

01:15:26   the wrong end of that thing and just like, I live, I still live in fear of screens getting

01:15:30   torn up.

01:15:31   But, you know, to be honest, my, my, my reactions are very similar to a lot of other people's

01:15:37   for a reason, I think.

01:15:38   And my reactions are, first of all, the first words out of my mouth, anytime anybody talks

01:15:43   about it, it's so big.

01:15:45   It's so much bigger than you think.

01:15:46   It really, really is really, really big.

01:15:49   And even, I think I mentioned this to you somewhere,

01:15:52   maybe on Slack, is just that I keep using it

01:15:55   and keep wanting to make myself use it.

01:15:58   My original idea was to do like a serenity

01:16:00   and like say like, okay, can I make myself

01:16:02   do almost everything on this

01:16:04   except what I absolutely can't do on this?

01:16:06   And I have to tell you, I found it incredibly challenging.

01:16:08   I was very excited to have this new thing,

01:16:11   but I suddenly felt a lot of friction

01:16:12   about the bigness of this to where even four days into it,

01:16:16   I'm not proud of this statement,

01:16:17   I found myself still falling back to using my iPad Air 2 more often because it felt so

01:16:22   much easier to use in my hands.

01:16:25   But with that said, I mean, I do think again, this is a product that could have a very bright

01:16:29   future.

01:16:30   I think the good parts of using this, I mean, I finally thought, "Oh gosh, I haven't watched

01:16:37   a movie on this yet.

01:16:38   I should do that."

01:16:39   So I fired up Mad Max and I was frankly blown away with the speakers, with the way it looked,

01:16:45   especially with, my God, the quality of sound.

01:16:47   So much separation, so loud without being distorted.

01:16:51   This is the first iPad, or first iOS device I've had

01:16:54   that I could, without using a Bluetooth speaker,

01:16:56   I could just listen to while doing the dishes,

01:16:58   which is really saying something.

01:17:00   So that experience is great.

01:17:01   Comics, I mean, gosh, I'm guessing you've looked

01:17:04   at comics on it. - I have.

01:17:05   - Yeah, that's one of the rare things

01:17:06   where I'll turn the brightness all the way up

01:17:08   and just, it's the first time I feel like

01:17:11   I prefer to read a physical comic

01:17:14   just because I like seeing the whole page.

01:17:16   This is the first time that I've really felt comfortable

01:17:18   reading in full page view

01:17:20   and not feeling like I'm missing anything at all.

01:17:23   - It actually even makes reading a two-page spread

01:17:27   in landscape readable, which is crazy.

01:17:30   - It's totally doable.

01:17:31   It's difficult to share with somebody

01:17:32   what this actually looks like,

01:17:33   'cause if you put up a photo,

01:17:34   you're not really seeing it in context.

01:17:35   But all kinds of stuff,

01:17:37   like I have to say, anything involving maps.

01:17:39   My daughter loves to, when we're on a car trip,

01:17:41   she likes to follow along on the map

01:17:43   and flip around in 3D view and look at all the buildings

01:17:45   and stuff like that and look at the Pacific Ocean

01:17:47   for a long time, which is an odd kid.

01:17:49   But that stuff's all really fun.

01:17:50   I guess I'm still struggling to figure out

01:17:53   where this belongs and who it's for,

01:17:56   but I wanna just stipulate.

01:17:57   I love it and I wanna love it,

01:18:00   but I can't quite figure out where it goes in my life.

01:18:04   I really want it to go somewhere,

01:18:06   but there's no use I've found for it yet

01:18:09   where this will be my first thing

01:18:12   that I pick a lot of the time.

01:18:13   And that's an odd place to be, especially given how much,

01:18:16   I mean, I spent some dough on this thing.

01:18:17   I wanna love it.

01:18:19   I just haven't really quite found the place.

01:18:20   And I feel like a lot of people's reactions mirror that.

01:18:24   A lot of people say, "I love this.

01:18:26   "I know this is gonna be great for somebody else.

01:18:27   "I'm trying to figure out how it's great for me.

01:18:29   "I feel like I don't deserve this pencil.

01:18:30   "Like, this is obviously like for real artists."

01:18:33   Like, everybody wants to love this thing,

01:18:34   but we're still struggling

01:18:36   with some of the limitations of it.

01:18:39   - Yeah, I agree.

01:18:40   I think some of it is that we have to get out of our,

01:18:43   it takes a bit to,

01:18:46   we've seen this with a lot of these Apple products lately,

01:18:48   especially the MacBook, we saw this,

01:18:50   the iPhone 6 Plus, we saw this,

01:18:52   which is, there is a, I think, a very human tendency

01:18:56   to be disappointed when a product is not for you,

01:19:01   especially if you're a fan of a company and its products

01:19:03   and you like their products,

01:19:05   that when they release a product that does not speak to you,

01:19:08   that you get, you're a little disappointed, right?

01:19:10   this is, oh, this is not for me.

01:19:13   It's like a clip show of a TV show or something.

01:19:15   It's like, well, I've already seen all the episodes.

01:19:17   I know this by heart.

01:19:18   I don't need to see this anymore.

01:19:19   I don't need a, you're doing a special

01:19:21   explaining how "Doctor Who" works.

01:19:22   Well, I've seen all the episodes.

01:19:24   I don't need to do that, right?

01:19:25   But that happens, with Apple stuff,

01:19:28   it certainly happens where the MacBook comes out

01:19:30   and people are like, I don't know,

01:19:31   I don't want this, it's stupid.

01:19:32   It's like, well, maybe it's not for you.

01:19:34   - Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

01:19:35   - And the iPhone 6 Plus, it's huge, it's stupid.

01:19:38   Well, maybe it's not for you.

01:19:39   And the iPad Pro is a little bit like that,

01:19:43   where because there's an iPad and an iPad Mini,

01:19:46   I mean, it's one of three products in this product line.

01:19:48   It doesn't need to be for everyone.

01:19:50   Plus, the iPad itself is not necessarily for everyone.

01:19:53   So it's for a very particular market.

01:19:56   It doesn't need to be, we all talk about it.

01:19:58   It's been the discussion of the month

01:20:01   because it's the Apple product of the month.

01:20:03   So we're all talking about it.

01:20:04   But in the end, it's not gonna be this product

01:20:07   that everybody's using.

01:20:08   It's a product that some small subset,

01:20:10   and we don't know how small or how big,

01:20:12   but it's still gonna be a subset of people

01:20:13   who are gonna use it, 'cause it's just iPad users,

01:20:15   and it's just the ones who wanna use the big screen.

01:20:17   For me, when I think about giving it back

01:20:20   and then what I do after that,

01:20:22   because I have this unique case where Apple gives me one,

01:20:25   and I get to have it for three weeks or a month,

01:20:29   and I have to give it back.

01:20:30   So for me, I get to use it for a while and think,

01:20:33   do I wanna buy one of these?

01:20:35   And I'm coming around to the idea that I may actually want to buy one of these.

01:20:41   And the reason would be because although it is not as comfortable to use in some

01:20:49   circumstances as the iPad Air, because yeah, when I wake up in the morning and

01:20:54   I'm drinking tea and checking Twitter and Slack, um, it's kind of large and unwieldy

01:21:02   and it's harder and I can't thumb type and stuff like that that I could do on

01:21:05   my iPad Air or my iPad Mini. But when I attach a keyboard to it and I'm standing

01:21:12   in my kitchen writing a story... It's kind of magic. Having that big screen makes a difference.

01:21:18   Doing that in editorial and having it... I can't tell you, Jason, I know you are a

01:21:23   famously ridiculously fast typist, but I'm an okay typist. I mean, I'm an okay

01:21:28   like 50, 60 words a minute typist, but everything changed for me when I learned...

01:21:32   I don't even know what they're called. I think it... I don't know if it's even Emacs

01:21:35   related, but like the ability to use the arrow keys and like option and command.

01:21:40   Keyboard shortcuts, yeah. But I mean you know it's what's weird I think a lot of

01:21:44   people may still not know about these. So I'm trying to the only way of course

01:21:47   what is the only way to do this. So like option left and right arrow takes you a

01:21:51   word at a time. Option shift arrow lets you select and so forth up and down left

01:21:57   and right and then you can do things like you know option option down and up

01:22:01   to get to the end of lines and so forth. I can't tell you what these commands are

01:22:05   All I can tell you is that I learned them and when I learned them everything changed

01:22:09   I wish you could find a link for them because really if you just spend

01:22:12   Even like a couple evenings learning this everything will change for you, and I'm persuaded

01:22:17   There are people who came up in the Mac community that may not know this

01:22:20   It's a little bit nerdy and what's great is I open editorial

01:22:23   I have this little logitech keyboard, and I'm flying I am flying through everything

01:22:27   This is a perfect writing machine in so many ways, but but when you're using it with again

01:22:34   So the KarmaSuck side of it, there's no way to use this keyboard comfortably.

01:22:38   I mean, when you're holding it in landscape, which is how I would hold it to look at almost everything that I use day-to-day,

01:22:44   it feels improbably large, and my little tiny girly thumbs can rarely make it to J and K without causing tendonitis.

01:22:52   Well, you can't hold it up and type comfortably on it.

01:22:57   I'm a lazy man, Jason. I like to lay in bed and look at my iPad. And it's pretty challenging.

01:23:02   Well, it's a little bit like, imagine holding your laptop up by the keyboard part and then trying to type.

01:23:12   That's a really good way to put it, actually.

01:23:14   Because it's basically the same size. It's slightly smaller, but you wouldn't do that. It would be really bad.

01:23:19   And then, sideways is just ridiculously large.

01:23:21   Right, but if you put it on your lap, it's not so bad.

01:23:27   But the thing is, a lot of times, most times, I'm not sitting there with my iPad in my lap

01:23:32   looking down at the screen in my lap.

01:23:35   I'm holding it with my hands, and then I want to key in something.

01:23:39   And yeah, maybe I should start using dictation more, although that is just going to annoy

01:23:43   my wife when I'm sitting there and she's still waking up and I'm like, "Ha ha, that is a

01:23:48   funny tweet that I am responding to now.

01:23:49   Beep."

01:23:50   I am laughing out loud.

01:23:51   Yeah, exactly.

01:23:52   Smiling face emoji.

01:23:53   Smiling face, smiling face.

01:23:54   Top hat emoji.

01:23:55   - Top hat emoji.

01:23:57   So, yeah, that's when I'm in that moment of like,

01:24:02   "Oh, this isn't so great.

01:24:04   "Maybe I can prop it up on my knees and I can do that."

01:24:07   It's not as good, whereas the iPad Air,

01:24:09   and certainly the iPad Mini,

01:24:10   I could navigate that pretty easily.

01:24:12   But my feeling is, maybe that's worth the trade-off

01:24:16   for the fact that I, that big screen in a lot of contexts

01:24:19   is really amazing, and I feel like for split view

01:24:24   and slide over, it's a lot nicer to do that,

01:24:28   and maybe could replace my laptop for when I'm traveling.

01:24:32   - Yeah, so this is something I talked about

01:24:34   on the show with Dower and Pohl,

01:24:35   but I bought this for a couple really silly reasons.

01:24:38   One is it was a little bit of an impulse buy,

01:24:41   where I realized it was midnight and I could buy one,

01:24:43   and I thought, you know what, I'll buy this, what the heck.

01:24:44   I'll be, see now, Myke Hurley, he actually returns things.

01:24:48   I don't know, I say I'm gonna return it, but I rarely do.

01:24:50   But I thought, you know, I'll try this.

01:24:51   But you know, honestly, the impulse,

01:24:53   that lie underneath this was I felt like in a way

01:24:58   that I can't really describe,

01:25:00   this might be a new kind of device.

01:25:02   It might not be, it's a gamble, right?

01:25:04   It's a gamble.

01:25:05   But like, I think there's,

01:25:06   I feel like I'm talking about this all the time,

01:25:08   so forgive me if I'm repeating myself,

01:25:10   but there are kinds of technology, hardware and software,

01:25:13   that are very focused on what we can do now

01:25:15   that replicates what we've done in the past.

01:25:17   And there's another kind of software and hardware

01:25:19   that represents what we're not even sure we understand,

01:25:22   stuff we may not exactly understand now,

01:25:24   but we won't realize for two or three years in the future

01:25:28   that that's what we wanted to do all along.

01:25:30   And Apple has been improbably good at getting that right.

01:25:33   Do you know what I mean?

01:25:34   Like they have been awful good at going like,

01:25:36   you know what, you're not actually gonna need

01:25:37   that floppy drive.

01:25:38   You know what, you're not actually gonna need

01:25:40   that ethernet port.

01:25:41   So who knows what part of that is chicken and egg.

01:25:43   But I just wanna say for what it's worth,

01:25:45   unlike the Apple TV, the Apple TV I got

01:25:47   because I wanted a faster version of stuff

01:25:49   that I do all the time, it's an appliance to me.

01:25:51   If it's a sexy appliance, that's great,

01:25:53   but it's still an appliance.

01:25:54   But something, you know, a little tickle in my gut

01:25:56   said that this iPad Pro, and I still believe this,

01:26:00   could be something special and different.

01:26:01   So I'm really gonna try and stick with it.

01:26:04   You know, and maybe I'm a ding-a-ling

01:26:05   for spending that dough on it,

01:26:06   but I really do feel like this is gonna be the beginning

01:26:09   of something interesting, if not big,

01:26:13   and I kinda wanna be there.

01:26:14   I'm usually the technology naysayer who's saying like,

01:26:17   "Oh, this thing doesn't run bash, meh."

01:26:19   But like in this case, I'm excited about it.

01:26:21   I'm gonna make myself stay excited about it

01:26:23   until I figure it out.

01:26:24   Because I do think, I think there's something in this

01:26:27   that could be special.

01:26:28   - I agree.

01:26:29   Now the pencil, I'm not gonna buy one of those.

01:26:32   But-- - For real?

01:26:33   - Yeah, I'm not gonna buy one of those.

01:26:34   - It's pretty neat.

01:26:35   - It's not my, it's just not my thing.

01:26:37   I just, I'm just, I was so happy to be free of the day

01:26:40   of taking handwritten notes and I can't draw.

01:26:44   My handwriting is awful.

01:26:47   Although I did use OneNote and it was able to OCR my words and make them searchable.

01:26:52   And I suppose that if I was frequently in a conference room taking notes on a pad of

01:26:58   paper, I would do that.

01:27:00   But when I was in those meetings back in my days at IDG, I would just have my iPad or

01:27:05   my laptop or my phone and Notes app open.

01:27:08   And I would just type them on that.

01:27:10   And I would much rather do that than write with a pen.

01:27:12   So it's just not for me.

01:27:14   So that part of it is not for me.

01:27:15   Right.

01:27:16   is, I mean, it is also that I want my kid to have access to these things.

01:27:20   If, you know, whenever it's reasonable and affordable, I'd like her to have the chance

01:27:24   to use this stuff too, where, I mean, everybody was really, when they did their field trip

01:27:30   to the Apple store, everybody was really impressed with how much she was able to do with the

01:27:33   Apple equipment really easily, which makes me feel good.

01:27:37   Because she has pretty much open exposure.

01:27:39   If it's games and stuff, we dial it back.

01:27:41   But like if she ever wants to open up paper, the app paper, and like draw, that's totally

01:27:45   fine.

01:27:46   is I also want her like you know it isn't just like a celebrity and prestige

01:27:51   you know FOMO thing of like oh I was there when this began it's more like

01:27:55   these if these are the tools that end up being similar to the tools she'll use in

01:27:58   the future I'm okay making that investment because what she does with

01:28:01   that pencil will be way more interesting maybe 20 years from now than what I'm

01:28:05   doing right now but it is it is it is weird but I'm do you think I'm being

01:28:10   crazy do you think we're being crazy to see do you think we're reading too much

01:28:15   into this? Possibly. I honestly don't know. I think I really believed it. The day I got

01:28:22   it I was like, first of all, wow, this thing's really big. But then the other part of me,

01:28:26   I kept going like, I wonder if I'm just being a delusional fan boy. I think it's the tech.

01:28:30   Well, this is often the challenge here is trying to think about, I had people ask me

01:28:36   things like for the Apple watch, people are like, are you going to get an Apple watch?

01:28:39   And I'm like, "Guys, I write about Apple for a living. Of course I'm going to get an Apple Watch.

01:28:46   It's my job to get an Apple Watch. So don't let my answer influence you in any way."

01:28:52   I was like, "Well, if Jason's getting an Apple Watch, he must think it's good." No,

01:28:55   I'm going to get an Apple Watch because it's my job to get an Apple Watch. I'll tell you later,

01:28:59   after I use it, if I think it's good. But my business is to do this and try this stuff.

01:29:07   So you've got to step back from that. So on one level, I think we are crazy in the sense that we are,

01:29:12   we talk about this stuff and write about this stuff, and then we're also enthusiastic people

01:29:16   who are trying to see, because we're going to talk to others about it, we're trying to see what it

01:29:20   might be used for, right? I want to be able to use this thing enough to answer the question

01:29:25   when somebody says, "Should I get one?" Which I'm going to reply with, "What would you use it for?"

01:29:31   Because you really have to ask that. It's not just a yes or no, but I want to be able to do that,

01:29:36   that and that's going to require time with it. And when I wrote a piece about that Federico

01:29:42   Vitici linked to, which I thought was funny because it was sort of written for him, which

01:29:46   is about how I realized that I've been using the Mac a long time and that using the iPad,

01:29:51   one of the reasons you would reject it is because it doesn't do things the way you do

01:29:54   them on your Mac. And we Mac users, we built up all these muscles about like how to do

01:29:59   things, you know, TextExpander does this and my AppleScript does this and my Automator

01:30:02   service does this." And that's all great, although you may not use all that stuff as

01:30:07   much as you think, but it's still a change, and it's different to go to the iPad. But

01:30:12   I feel like us, especially as people who write and talk about this stuff, need to make the

01:30:17   effort to get outside ourselves and think about, you know, "It's not just about me.

01:30:23   It's about, you know, what would people use this?" And it's hard, you know, it's hard

01:30:27   to do that. But so I feel like some of it is just science experiment kind of time, which

01:30:32   - Yeah, and I realize we don't have time today,

01:30:35   but that's what leads me to the ultimate question here,

01:30:38   which is when you're thinking about what you're gonna get

01:30:41   or what you wanna suggest to other people,

01:30:44   I talk about crazy times.

01:30:48   I feel like this might be one of the most confusing times

01:30:50   for deciding what array of Apple products

01:30:53   to have in your life.

01:30:54   - Times of confusion.

01:30:55   - Times of confusion.

01:30:56   Thank you, Tim Goodwin.

01:30:57   But I feel like there's never been quite

01:31:00   the kind of breadth of selection, but also like,

01:31:04   I might have, I had this in the little show note thing,

01:31:06   like the ridiculous calculus that you have to go through,

01:31:11   what did I say actually, to think about the combination of...

01:31:15   - Size, screen, weight, capacity, input, price?

01:31:20   - Size, screen, weight, capacity, input, and price,

01:31:24   with my basic theory being that most Apple people

01:31:26   tend to focus on having two devices,

01:31:28   But it's like Heisenberg or something.

01:31:31   Anytime you're gonna pick one of those,

01:31:33   it has a giant effect on what else you use.

01:31:35   Do you wanna have a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro

01:31:38   and a 6S Plus?

01:31:39   Well, probably not, unless you're just being fancy.

01:31:42   How do you pick complementary things?

01:31:44   And how do you decide which things

01:31:45   you're gonna do what things on?

01:31:47   How much do you need to know what you're gonna do with that

01:31:48   before you buy it?

01:31:49   And maybe you said this,

01:31:51   actually I think it was Gruber that said this,

01:31:53   but you think about how unusual it is that

01:31:58   It used to be that you could say, "Hey, I want the nicest, I want the best one of these

01:32:02   there is, which should I buy?"

01:32:03   Well, go buy the most expensive one.

01:32:05   I don't think that's, I agree with my friends who say that's not true anymore.

01:32:08   I'm not sure that the iPad Pro is the best iPad for everybody by a long shot.

01:32:12   Ditto the MacBook Pro.

01:32:13   Do you really, do you want all of that?

01:32:15   I mean, there's, I think there's a lot of nuance to deciding how you're going to buy

01:32:20   and thank goodness there's people like you that are out there and trying it out and can

01:32:23   say like, "Here's who this is good for and why."

01:32:27   Times of confusion.

01:32:28   - You're right, well this is, I kind of mentioned this before, it's the shift that Apple has had from the, you know, you can get an iPhone.

01:32:38   To, would you like the iPhone 5, would you like the iPhone 6, would you like the iPhone 6 Plus, would you like the iPhone 6S, would you like the iPhone 6S Plus?

01:32:47   They're all available, right?

01:32:49   - I'd love to have a 5S, but guess what? All you can get is 32 gigs.

01:32:54   Okay, now I'm thinking about space. Where do my photos go? Oh, it depends. Are you going

01:32:57   to have them? You know, it's so once you actually really start pulling that thread, it's so

01:33:02   much more complex than you realize. And it isn't really just about saying I want a big

01:33:06   screen and a little screen. There are trade offs to every single one of these. And in

01:33:10   order to get the most out of these devices, you have to be very canny about how you pair

01:33:13   them. Yeah, I think it's a it's an interesting thing that we it says something about about

01:33:19   us that because I wrote a piece about this about the Apple watch where I

01:33:23   became completely paralyzed about what Apple watch to buy because there were so

01:33:28   many different options involving well these bands are available for these

01:33:31   models it's like an SAT problem and yeah and they're on a train going 20 miles an

01:33:36   hour to Chicago but the orange bands are on the train headed for San Francisco so

01:33:40   it is Johnny has five millenies loops but finally from a consumer psychology

01:33:47   perspective it's good business because people want choice. But for some people

01:33:52   it's this tyranny of choice that is like "I can't decide what to do!" And

01:33:58   those kind of are battling. I think in the end, is it better that there's

01:34:03   an iPad Mini, an iPad Air, and an iPad Pro than if there was just a single

01:34:07   one-size-fits-all iPad? Yeah, it's totally better, but it makes it more complicated

01:34:11   to decide which one to buy. So that's the trade-off. I would not go

01:34:15   back to a world where there was literally just the iPad Air and there

01:34:18   wasn't a mini and a pro. I don't want to live in that world because it's

01:34:21   better that we've got these choices but I wrote 1500 words for Macworld last

01:34:25   week about the five iPad models that are available now and who should buy what

01:34:31   right because there's also the Air original and the mini 2 that are still

01:34:35   being sold right so with each one of those you're not just thinking about

01:34:38   price you're thinking about screen you're talking about size

01:34:42   Remember, you gotta carry two of those.

01:34:43   Are you gonna carry two of those devices when you travel?

01:34:45   Well, I don't know, let me think about it.

01:34:46   Okay, what about the capacity?

01:34:48   Like it really, and the RAM,

01:34:49   like what you wanna do with this,

01:34:50   it all really starts to matter.

01:34:51   - Yeah, yeah, so I would say for people who write about

01:34:55   and talk about Apple products for a living,

01:34:58   on one level, it's great because we always said this,

01:35:01   when there are times of confusion,

01:35:03   when customers have questions and they're seeking advice,

01:35:07   whether it's how to use something or what to buy,

01:35:09   they look to the media, basically.

01:35:13   And these days, they're looking to their peers

01:35:15   on the internet and all that,

01:35:16   but that's still media of a sort.

01:35:17   They're looking for help, and that's a great opportunity

01:35:20   to talk about this stuff and write stories about it

01:35:22   and all of that.

01:35:23   But it also is that, it's tough, because like I said,

01:35:28   you also wanna personalize the recommendations.

01:35:31   And that's the thing that I have the hardest problem with

01:35:33   when we're talking about buying advice,

01:35:34   is people say, "Should I buy the Apple Watch?"

01:35:36   Or, "Should I buy an iPad?"

01:35:39   And I can't say yes to any of that.

01:35:43   - That's like saying, should I buy a condo?

01:35:45   - Yeah.

01:35:46   - It depends, it depends, it depends.

01:35:46   - Should I invest in real estate?

01:35:49   Well, is it in Detroit?

01:35:52   Or is it in Hawaii?

01:35:54   Yeah, and that's something to keep in mind

01:35:59   because I think a lot of times this does get really

01:36:01   reductive where people are like,

01:36:02   oh, the new Apple stuff is stupid,

01:36:04   don't buy anything from Apple.

01:36:06   It's like, all right, well, that's dumb.

01:36:08   there are people for whom an Apple product is probably the wrong call, right?

01:36:13   And certainly specific Apple products, but maybe even all the Apple products.

01:36:17   - For example, if you've never used a tablet, I mean, the thing is,

01:36:21   you hear from people who love having a tablet, you're not going to hear as much

01:36:24   on a regular basis from people who had a tablet and didn't like it.

01:36:28   You know what I mean?

01:36:29   There's a kind of a false positive in that way.

01:36:32   So, like, you might want to go out and get one of those cheapy...

01:36:35   Well, I'm not saying to do this, but, you know, you might want to pick one

01:36:37   up cheaper used or borrow a friend's for a weekend or something to find out if it's really

01:36:41   for you. Because and again making that leap to retina like the difference between a retina

01:36:46   iPad and a regular iPad like once you see that you don't want to go back. It's hard

01:36:50   to downgrade in some ways once you've got enough stuff that you're relying on having

01:36:53   a one terabyte drive. I don't mean to beat this into the ground. I just mean that I think

01:36:57   that when we think about these things there's so many different angles to consider rather

01:37:02   than just like oh go buy the most expensive Apple thing because it really does depend.

01:37:05   Hi, I'm Jason. I'll be your personal shopper.

01:37:07   Hi, Jason.

01:37:09   Have you brought your essay about what you plan on doing with your Apple products?

01:37:14   The summer that my grandma died was the worst summer ever.

01:37:17   Okay, that's not the essay that I intended, but we can go with it.

01:37:21   What kind of things did your grandma like to do with her computer?

01:37:23   My grandmother was a very sweet lady, and she...

01:37:27   Boy, how'd you do on essays? Were you good on essays?

01:37:30   Yeah, I was good on essays.

01:37:32   - It was the worst kind 'cause I thought I was good at essays.

01:37:34   - Oh no. - It was the worst.

01:37:35   - That's not, no, I was good at essays except, you know.

01:37:38   - And meeting poor people made me think about my life.

01:37:42   - A callback here is I was good at essays,

01:37:45   but you know what I wasn't good at

01:37:46   was writing out the essays legibly.

01:37:49   And for whenever I would have something

01:37:51   that like an in-class essay or like the AP English exam,

01:37:56   you know, you had to write it, hand write it.

01:37:59   Oh my God, it was the worst.

01:38:01   Because I write slowly and semi-neatly or quickly and illegibly.

01:38:08   And so I had to slow myself down when I'm writing the essay, and it was just very painful.

01:38:12   But I was good at essays.

01:38:13   But, you know, I'm a writer.

01:38:15   I get paid to write things.

01:38:17   It's not surprising that I was pretty good at writing essays.

01:38:19   Well, I like the way that sounded.

01:38:20   That was very noble.

01:38:22   I'm a writer.

01:38:23   It's what I do.

01:38:24   I write.

01:38:25   It's what I do.

01:38:26   People pay me to write things, so is it surprising that I was good at writing things?

01:38:29   You brag about it all the time.

01:38:30   Just go ahead and drop it.

01:38:31   - What's your correct words per minute?

01:38:33   - On typing? - Yeah.

01:38:34   - It's not bragging, it's just a fact.

01:38:36   It does not make me a better person

01:38:38   that I can type 110 words a minute.

01:38:40   - Sick burn.

01:38:41   - What it means is that my hands have become like claws

01:38:45   because I'm incapable of writing things.

01:38:48   When I had to sign something at the orthodontist firm,

01:38:52   'cause my daughter's getting braces,

01:38:53   and they're like, "Sign here,"

01:38:55   and I'm like, "Signing with pen, hmm."

01:38:58   - Interesting.

01:38:59   And we were talking about cursive the other day, and I realized that I don't know any of the cursive letters except the ones that are in my name.

01:39:05   I've forgotten all the rest of them, because I know how to do my signature. That's it. That's it.

01:39:09   So what I'm saying is yes, I type 110 words a minute, and my hands have devolved into cave claws.

01:39:16   Ah, amazing.

01:39:18   Because I can't write things anymore with pencils.

01:39:21   Well, have me back again. We have so much to talk about.

01:39:24   Before we go, are you ready for some—

01:39:26   - No, no, I'm just saying as far as the meat topics,

01:39:29   I said there's a lot of meat topics.

01:39:30   I gotta hear about this Ask Upgrade from this week.

01:39:32   - We gotta do some Ask Upgrade before we go,

01:39:33   but yes, I would love to have you back sometime.

01:39:35   That would be awesome.

01:39:36   I always, I'm afraid to ask you on things

01:39:38   because I feel like you're busy.

01:39:39   - You like to deploy me tactically.

01:39:40   - Well, I feel like you're a busy guy.

01:39:41   This is the thing I discovered,

01:39:43   'cause this was true with you and with Andy and Natko

01:39:46   and some other people I know where they're like,

01:39:48   "Why don't you ever ask me on your podcast?"

01:39:49   I was like, "I figure you're like too big for a podcast

01:39:52   and too busy."

01:39:53   So and now you got it like all the other podcasts because you got the podcast with John Roderick

01:39:58   You got the podcast with Dan Benjamin

01:39:59   You got the podcast with John, Syracuse and you got the podcast with Jim Dalrymple am I missing any podcast?

01:40:03   Oh, you got the podcast with Max Timken where you're talking about the top chef a show. I've never seen yeah

01:40:08   Yeah, but I'm always available for you. You know that I know that my only goal in life is to eventually be amusing on the

01:40:14   Incomparable it's it's the one show where I feel like I'm consistently not up to my game

01:40:18   It's not it's not accurate at all those are some of the best episodes that you're on oh god

01:40:22   I try so hard I think about I'm up at night you know I'm like Harry Potter

01:40:25   under the blanket doing doing spells

01:40:27   yeah that's what he's doing let's do it's about a sponsor give a sponsor for

01:40:32   ask upgrade do ask upgrade this week lasers is brought to you by making light

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01:41:31   I get up, I curse the day, I have some coffee, but I could use some candles. I'm not gonna

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01:41:36   That's right. Well, that's, you know, so you make the coffee and that's a ritual. The candle

01:41:39   ritual though, it fits in. We are people, human beings, who like these rituals. It gives

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01:44:06   Upgrading Michael wrote in to demand that we list our top holiday season.

01:44:13   This is very specific. Top holiday season breakfast foods or meals.

01:44:17   Oh man, I don't think I have four.

01:44:20   I don't know if I've got a top four breakfasts, let alone holiday season breakfasts.

01:44:26   You make a mean biscuit though.

01:44:27   I do make a mean biscuit. A buttermilk biscuit. Not the, you know, British cookie kind of biscuit.

01:44:34   Oh, the makes-a-

01:44:34   but the southern buttermilk biscuit, I do that. I do a good waffle. I did a waffle this weekend.

01:44:42   And for actually on Christmas morning a lot of times I will make cinnamon rolls.

01:44:50   That it's the Alton Brown cinnamon rolls you make them.

01:44:54   That's right where you put out put a beer can in it?

01:44:56   No, you don't put a beer can.

01:44:58   That's just the chicken?

01:45:00   I used a wine bottle to roll it out though because I didn't have a rolling pin. So I

01:45:05   just used a wine bottle, which totally works by the way. Wine bottle, great as a rolling

01:45:11   pin.

01:45:12   It's a baking hack.

01:45:13   It is. It's a baking life hack. But I made that and that's really great. You bake it

01:45:17   the night before and then they rise overnight and you bake them in the morning and that's

01:45:21   pretty good. My kids love those. I'd make those more, but those are a lot harder to

01:45:24   make than buttermilk biscuits, let me tell you. That's my holiday breakfast.

01:45:28   - I'm gonna Kobayashi Maru this,

01:45:30   because all of ours involve takeout food.

01:45:32   I mean, there aren't that many,

01:45:34   our special occasion foods are often more like stuff

01:45:36   from the neighborhood that we'll get.

01:45:38   There's a dim sum place nearby, we like to get dim sum,

01:45:40   sometimes not too much,

01:45:41   not the healthiest food in the world.

01:45:43   There's a place that has Irish food

01:45:46   that we refer to simply as Irish breakfast,

01:45:48   that's kind of a special thing for us.

01:45:51   And you know, that's mostly takeout things.

01:45:54   I'm trying to think of what we make at home that's special.

01:45:57   My wife and my daughter will make cookies sometimes

01:46:00   and things like that.

01:46:01   That's kind of a holiday thing.

01:46:02   That counts, right?

01:46:03   - Yeah, sure.

01:46:04   - Well, they're decorating the tree as I speak,

01:46:05   so we're not bereft of holiday spirit.

01:46:08   - It's that firewall.

01:46:09   The firewall's down.

01:46:10   Our kids wanted us to get a tree this weekend,

01:46:15   and my wife was suddenly like, "Yeah, next weekend.

01:46:17   "We're gonna put it off,"

01:46:18   which I thought was a bold move,

01:46:19   'cause I was ready. - That's super bold.

01:46:21   We went to the mall downtown to see,

01:46:24   we went to see the good dinosaur,

01:46:25   and did, we have this tradition where we go to the Hallmark store

01:46:28   and we each, we pick out an ornament for the tree.

01:46:31   So she got a really, really cute little baby, like a Rottweiler.

01:46:37   And I got a Don Corleone.

01:46:39   And we got my wife, Daryl Dixon, which she was pretty excited about.

01:46:43   Daryl from The Walking Dead.

01:46:45   So now there's a man with a crossbow on our Christmas tree.

01:46:49   - Wow.

01:46:49   So there you go, Michael.

01:46:51   Things that are unrelated to what you asked.

01:46:54   Happy Holidays. Flaming Cheese on Twitter asks, "When do you think Amazon will stop being a butt and put Prime on Apple TV?"

01:47:07   Somebody said that they got a, maybe just somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about,

01:47:12   but had a customer service rep at Amazon tell them that they were working on an Apple TV app for Prime Video.

01:47:19   video and I don't see why they wouldn't do it I'm gonna be that guy and and

01:47:26   push back a little and say like I don't really see any reason why they need to

01:47:29   I have not understood this kerfuffle I think it's completely understandable

01:47:35   that Amazon would do what they're doing it's a business and they want to I don't

01:47:39   know I just I don't think it's weird Apple does stuff like this all the time

01:47:42   decisions about what doesn't doesn't run I don't think out Amazon's a hardware

01:47:46   company. I think Amazon makes hardware because it makes it easier to access their services

01:47:50   and that's why you can read a Kindle book anywhere and not just on a Kindle because

01:47:54   they just care about getting Prime memberships. So I feel like the Firebox is good because

01:48:00   it gives them a thing that they completely control, but I feel ultimately they want to

01:48:05   be everywhere. They don't want to say, "Well, if you like Apple stuff, you have to buy another

01:48:09   box from us because we're not going to be there." Because they really are motivated

01:48:12   to be everywhere because in the end they just want your money for Prime. That's what they

01:48:16   want.

01:48:17   - I'm trying not to sound like a complete idiot here, but I think there's a big difference

01:48:20   between... We want you... So I think Amazon's ultimate goal in some ways, obviously it's

01:48:25   not to make money, their goal in some ways is to make you think of them as the place

01:48:29   you go for stuff. Not so different in some ways from what Google and Apple want. It just

01:48:33   happens to be different kinds of stuff and that they're succeeding with. In Amazon's

01:48:37   they want you to be where they want they want to be the place you go to buy stuff

01:48:42   I don't know if they want to be the place where you consume stuff I think

01:48:45   they do they want people to have that I think I think they will eventually and

01:48:49   there's part of the problem is with the wording of this I don't know if I agree

01:48:52   with flaming cheese is wording of this stop being a but you know I don't use

01:48:55   word but but I suspect at some point Amazon probably will put it out but I

01:49:00   doubt it's like a giant priority and not least of which is they don't want to

01:49:05   appear to be I think I think there's a reason they didn't put it on the first

01:49:10   day you know what I mean yeah they're just they're just acting coy like yeah

01:49:13   yeah like oh god you finally Apple can you know can can can do this thing and

01:49:18   save us so I don't know I mean um I guess from a consumer standpoint yeah

01:49:23   it's a bummer when anything happens that makes it harder to get the stuff that

01:49:26   you like but from a business standpoint I don't think it's that hard to

01:49:29   understand I feel like if Amazon is okay putting Netflix on the fire TV

01:49:35   then I think in the end it doesn't matter.

01:49:39   Like the hardware is there as an enabler

01:49:41   and they want to be everywhere.

01:49:43   So yeah, but I could see your point.

01:49:44   I think maybe there's an aspect of it,

01:49:46   which is we're gonna play it cool.

01:49:47   We'll get there eventually.

01:49:49   We're not rushing out on day one,

01:49:50   but we'll get there and people will be happy.

01:49:52   But yeah, but I think they'll be there.

01:49:54   - I wonder how much demand,

01:49:56   I wonder again if this could be a bubble thing.

01:49:57   I wonder how much demand for that there is

01:50:00   amongst the corpus of Amazon,

01:50:03   users and power users. As an Amazon Prime customer I would say

01:50:09   I use their service a lot more when it's more readily available to me on

01:50:13   devices.

01:50:14   Oh, don't get me wrong, I want it there. I guess my question is, like, I mean, of people who have

01:50:18   Kindle tablets and stuff like that,

01:50:19   do you think there's as much of, I mean, think about the subset of that,

01:50:24   which is people that own Apple TVs.

01:50:25   A subset of that of people with Apple TVs and Amazon Prime. I feel like the Kindle

01:50:30   tablets and the Fire TV, they're almost like the store brand.

01:50:33   - It's like you gotta have it, right?

01:50:35   And they can control it,

01:50:37   but it's not gonna be the only path.

01:50:38   And they're not, unless you're, I don't think,

01:50:41   maybe Amazon's ultimate goal is to be Trader Joe's

01:50:43   and have everything be a store brand,

01:50:45   but I think more they want everyone to have their stuff

01:50:48   and be, like you said, the place that people buy stuff.

01:50:51   So if you wanna rent a movie,

01:50:53   you're gonna look at Amazon to rent or buy a movie.

01:50:55   And if they can get that on the Apple TV, that's great,

01:50:58   'cause now people are gonna consider Amazon

01:51:00   and their ties to Amazon instead of Apple.

01:51:04   And that's good, just like Comixology and Kindle Books

01:51:07   and all that other stuff that I can read on my Apple devices

01:51:10   and still buy it from Amazon.

01:51:14   That's good for them. - It's kind of perplexing,

01:51:15   though, the way that they choose to break up their apps.

01:51:17   You've got the Amazon Store app on iOS,

01:51:19   which is actually a pretty good app, I would say.

01:51:21   I like that it's got Touch ID,

01:51:22   it's got some nice Taptic feedback.

01:51:25   It's a neat app.

01:51:26   You've got a separate app, obviously, for Comixology.

01:51:29   That makes sense.

01:51:30   You've got a separate app for Amazon Video.

01:51:32   That makes sense, I guess.

01:51:34   Have you done the Amazon, Amazon Today, Amazon Now,

01:51:39   what is it called?

01:51:40   The one hour, two hour delivery service?

01:51:42   - No, I haven't done that.

01:51:43   - That's a separate app and it feels like

01:51:46   a completely different experience,

01:51:48   completely different team.

01:51:49   And it's not at all integrated with the rest.

01:51:52   It's not part of the Amazon app.

01:51:53   It's really strange.

01:51:54   You go in, it's a separate login.

01:51:56   You can't track your orders in the usual way.

01:51:58   It's almost like a completely different business unit,

01:52:00   which is maybe exactly what it is.

01:52:02   But it's odd, it's odd.

01:52:03   And I would have to imagine that a lot of that

01:52:05   has to do with choosing where you're gonna put something

01:52:09   given that it might cost them 30%.

01:52:12   I mean, do they pay 30% for the Amazon app?

01:52:15   Do they pay 30% to Apple?

01:52:16   - No, because those are physical goods.

01:52:18   - Physical goods.

01:52:19   - Instead of digital goods.

01:52:21   - But comiXology still.

01:52:24   - Yeah. - That's weird.

01:52:25   Ah, I wish they'd bring that back.

01:52:27   I miss it, I still miss it.

01:52:28   I can really, maybe it was other things happening

01:52:32   at the same time, but I can really track a huge drop

01:52:35   in the amount of comics I was buying each week to,

01:52:38   I hate to admit it, but it's true,

01:52:39   to Comixology taking out that ability to buy, maddening.

01:52:42   - Yeah, that's a rabbit hole.

01:52:45   Yeah, it still makes me mad too.

01:52:47   - So when do I think they'll do it?

01:52:48   I think they will do it.

01:52:50   And I think at some point, I mean,

01:52:52   do you think they'll bring back Apple TV

01:52:54   on the store as well?

01:52:55   Do you think that's permanent?

01:52:58   No, I think they'll bring it back.

01:52:59   Yeah, I do too. Maybe after Christmas.

01:53:01   Yeah, after the Amazon app is available on the new Apple TV, then they'll sell the new Apple TV.

01:53:06   I'm gonna say, uh, quarter to 2016, he said, punditly.

01:53:10   Okay, well done. Ding! Three points for you.

01:53:13   You're welcome, Mr. Cheese.

01:53:15   [laughs]

01:53:16   Michael wrote in to say, "I just switched to Mac and my Microsoft muscle memory is useless.

01:53:21   Do you have any tips or resources for learning the Mac fast? Shortcuts, scripting, etc."

01:53:27   I mean, my first thing is get a, I don't have a utility here, but you know, get a utility

01:53:33   that maps your control key to be your command key and you will get a lot of your muscle

01:53:39   memory back immediately because that's basically the difference or just start treating, treating

01:53:45   the, realizing the command key is basically what your old control key is.

01:53:49   That will get you 90% of the way there.

01:53:50   - Yeah, I think there's two, it's a great question.

01:53:53   I think there's two general ways to approach this no matter who you are, no matter what

01:53:56   your skill level is.

01:53:57   involves certain kinds of software which could include things like like you're

01:54:01   describing these there's key remappers you can do you know for example first

01:54:04   thing I do on a Mac one of the first things is go in and turn caps lock into

01:54:08   control that's just there's no reason to have caps lock I don't need I'm not

01:54:12   Craig and then there's obviously there's things like text expander yeah there are

01:54:16   things like what's my keyboard I have a clipboard manager I don't even know the

01:54:19   name of it fly cut a whole bunch of those things definitely but there's this

01:54:25   whole other thing over here and did I mention Better Touch Tool? Better Touch

01:54:28   Tool, do you use that? I don't. Oh it's awfully good. It's not just for touch pads.

01:54:32   It basically allows you to map almost anything to anything. If you're using a

01:54:35   touch pad, especially on your Mac, wow you can do some banana stuff. Brett

01:54:39   Terpstra has written a lot about it. That's where I learned about it. But then

01:54:42   there's this whole other area over here which is like, well how do you learn the

01:54:44   commands? Because learning the key commands, like we talked about with text

01:54:48   editing, it just makes such a difference. And my only advice there is to start

01:54:51   small. Like don't feel overwhelmed. Like when I first got a copy of Learning the

01:54:55   I felt like I had to learn everything and that they're all equally important.

01:54:59   I think, you know, learn, talk to a friend, find out which five or ten commands could

01:55:03   be time savers.

01:55:05   And then every time you start noticing you're doing something a lot, get in the habit of

01:55:08   going to Command Shift Question Mark, I believe, is that right?

01:55:13   Command Shift Question Mark in most apps will bring up the help menu.

01:55:18   The help menu.

01:55:19   And then, oh, command, I guess, see, I don't even know what I've installed in here that's

01:55:23   causing what?

01:55:24   slash can there's the one for filling your keyboard basically learn the

01:55:27   keyboard shortcuts every time you start doing something with the mouse go and

01:55:31   figure out if you could be doing with a keyboard shortcut but don't feel like

01:55:34   you have to learn at all if you learn five that end up being useful to you

01:55:38   you're so far ahead and I'll throw in one more the help menu has a search box

01:55:42   in it that will search all the commands all the menus yeah in the Mac menu of

01:55:47   that app so if you are convinced that there must be something called rules

01:55:53   in the menu somewhere go to help and type rules and it will give you a list

01:56:00   of command labels in the menu that have that word in it and and we'll show you

01:56:06   where it is what menu it's under and and what keyboard shortcuts so that's a good

01:56:11   way to learn to create it lots of stuff in there

01:56:13   listener Dan asks what's your iOS device replacement process you hand down to

01:56:20   family? Do you sell it? Do you keep it forever in a drawer? What do you do?

01:56:24   Mine's pretty simple. It's usually hand-me-down. I've been trying to bring my, when I say bring

01:56:29   my wife up to date, is like to be a little bit more kind about buying her new devices,

01:56:33   and she's loving it. She got an iPhone 6s Plus. I'm blown away. She loves it. It's way

01:56:40   too big for me, but she adores it. So generally what we do is we will sometimes, depends how

01:56:46   recent they are. Sometimes we'll have is like like bang around iPhones for stuff

01:56:49   like running BB-8 and things like that, but the iPads generally go to my

01:56:54   daughter and then we also donate them to my daughter's school. They love iPads.

01:56:59   Even old iPads. Guys, if you have old iPads, consider giving them to a

01:57:03   school. You will make their day. Good one. I also do the hand-me-down thing. My kids

01:57:10   have my old iPhone and my wife's old iPhone. My son's been using my old iPad

01:57:16   and that's that's the that's basically the plan I do otherwise keep them around

01:57:21   forever in the sense that again this goes to me not being a regular consumer

01:57:26   it's useful for me to have old devices around because I could refer to them

01:57:30   when I need to write about things involving Apple so you know like I will

01:57:34   why do I have an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 4s in my drawer well one reason is that

01:57:39   I can take them out and take pictures with their cameras when the new

01:57:42   holographic iPhone 8 camera appears and I can compare and say look how terrible

01:57:47   these old non holographic cameras were back in the day and so I eventually they

01:57:52   they go in a drawer but I will it's kind of magic when you plug them in and they

01:57:55   still work yeah my original original iPhone still works it's crazy weird yeah

01:58:00   well I mean like my 5s man I love my 5s probably my pound-for-pound favorite

01:58:05   iPhone I've had and I still keep it around the house I mean the battery is a

01:58:08   little bit dicey it's the reason I replaced it but it's great for just

01:58:11   around the house stuff. I would use it as a remote if I could. But those are great for

01:58:17   just banging around. Or great for car trips and stuff like that too.

01:58:19   - A little story about my son. He's been using my original iPad Mini and loves it and has

01:58:26   been just using it endlessly as a YouTube box and a game machine and all that. And it's

01:58:30   the original, so it's not Retina and it's not super fast.

01:58:33   - It's an iPad too.

01:58:34   Since I switched to the Air, I've had the Air 2.

01:58:39   I've had my iPad Mini 2 in a drawer.

01:58:43   And I thought, well, at some point,

01:58:44   I need to roll this down to him.

01:58:45   And I had that moment where I thought, you know what?

01:58:47   That kid takes that thing around

01:58:49   and is like doing other things with it while he's doing this

01:58:54   and he's gonna drop it.

01:58:56   And he dropped it and it got a little tiny crack

01:58:58   in the corner, but it wasn't on the screen.

01:58:59   I was like, oh well, okay.

01:59:01   And then this weekend, he dropped it again.

01:59:03   - Oh, you're so smart, you got it.

01:59:05   - I got the big crack.

01:59:06   So now, he doesn't even know this,

01:59:08   but I have one in reserve, that other one,

01:59:11   to give to him during some holiday period.

01:59:13   But right now we're in the interregnum

01:59:15   where he's really sad that he doesn't have an iPad

01:59:17   and has learned the new rules about taking care of his iPad

01:59:21   and we've instituted all sorts of like,

01:59:24   no traveling with the active iPad kind of thing.

01:59:28   Because it's like, yeah, it's great

01:59:30   that you're making yourself a sandwich

01:59:31   while holding an iPad and wearing headphones,

01:59:34   this has gotta stop.

01:59:35   - Slicing onions.

01:59:36   But you're also applying the CGP gray thing, right?

01:59:37   Three is two, two is one, one is none?

01:59:39   - Sure, you gotta have a backup.

01:59:41   - That's true.

01:59:42   Ever since he talked about that on Cortex with Myke,

01:59:45   I think about it constantly.

01:59:46   It's a thing from the military.

01:59:47   It sounds like you don't know this,

01:59:48   but there's a thing in the military

01:59:50   which is that three is two, two is one, and one is none.

01:59:53   That basically if you have, and that goes for backups,

01:59:55   it goes for toilet paper, it goes for anything.

01:59:57   If you're on the last one or only one of something,

02:00:00   you might as well have none.

02:00:01   - Yeah. - And in that case,

02:00:03   you're being super dad.

02:00:04   You've actually got two, so two is one.

02:00:05   - I was never in the military,

02:00:07   nor did I go to any military-themed schools.

02:00:10   - Eyes front, soldier.

02:00:12   - Speedmaster asks, "What are your favorite email clients

02:00:17   for iOS these days?"

02:00:19   - Do you wanna go?

02:00:21   - I've been using Outlook for the last couple of weeks,

02:00:22   and it's kind of amazing.

02:00:24   - It's pretty good.

02:00:25   The calendar leaves a lot to be desired.

02:00:27   - It is not, I don't trust that calendar.

02:00:29   - I'm not sure you can edit things on it.

02:00:31   - I put things in there and they don't come out

02:00:33   anywhere else, which is not a good thing.

02:00:35   Although it seems to show me what's in my calendar,

02:00:37   but I don't think I trust to do any input in Outlook.

02:00:40   But as an email client, it's pretty good.

02:00:41   And before that I was using the Reddle, what is it?

02:00:46   Spark. - Spark.

02:00:47   - And I like that too, but Outlook right now,

02:00:50   good on the iPhone and kind of great on the iPad,

02:00:54   and really great on the iPad Pro, actually.

02:00:56   So that's what I've been using right now,

02:00:59   and that's unpopular to say, and I'm using,

02:01:01   my server is Gmail, but it's really good with it.

02:01:04   It's just a good mail client.

02:01:06   - I was hoping I was gonna surprise you by saying Outlook,

02:01:08   but you still fund it.

02:01:09   - Peer pressure, I listen to you, and I listen to Vitici.

02:01:12   - Well, here's the thing is, it's all business.

02:01:15   It looks good, it's not cute.

02:01:17   - No.

02:01:17   - It's all business, it looks great.

02:01:19   - The filtered view is really nice and does a good job.

02:01:21   - Oh yeah.

02:01:22   - Rather than having like--

02:01:24   - Smart inbox.

02:01:25   - Yeah, yeah, it's a toggle where it's got

02:01:28   like your stuff that we think is important,

02:01:30   and then you can quickly jump in and show

02:01:32   all the other stuff that is totally not important,

02:01:34   and it's very good at filtering it intelligently.

02:01:37   - And it works pretty well in that sense,

02:01:39   because when you're on the go with your iPad,

02:01:42   you don't really, I mean, how much searching

02:01:44   and running around and being in different mailboxes

02:01:46   do you really need? - Exactly.

02:01:47   - I think about all the mailboxes and smart filters

02:01:49   and flags and everything that I've made

02:01:51   over the years on Gmail, and I don't use

02:01:52   any of them anymore.

02:01:53   I've basically got three folders, that's all there is.

02:01:56   But no, Outlook's really good, I think Spark is really good,

02:01:58   I'll be glad to see what that looks like on when they come up with an iPad version.

02:02:02   Yeah, me too.

02:02:03   It's not that the...

02:02:04   I really like Spark and initially I really, really liked it.

02:02:06   In the beta it was kind of blowing me away.

02:02:08   It's not super economical in terms of...

02:02:11   It's got a lot of Chrome.

02:02:12   It's pretty Chrome, but it's got a lot of Chrome.

02:02:15   Some tasks that you want to do...

02:02:17   I realized like if I was in a message and I wanted to delete it, I had to like tap the

02:02:24   share button or something and then tap delete.

02:02:27   But if I didn't, and I was like, "Wow, I gotta do a couple of taps.

02:02:31   That's kind of too much."

02:02:32   But if I just went back out of the message, now it was marked as read, and it would disappear

02:02:35   and go down into the red mail.

02:02:36   Oh, gross.

02:02:37   Yeah.

02:02:38   And I was like, "Guys," and I told them, I remember telling them, "When I'm reading a

02:02:43   message, I need one tap to archive, one tap to delete.

02:02:45   Those need to be on that screen."

02:02:47   And they're working on it.

02:02:49   But yeah, there's some fiddly parts there.

02:02:50   But I like that they've had fun with it and tried to make something different and new

02:02:53   with it while still giving you what you need.

02:02:55   So I give them a lot of aloha for that.

02:02:58   The other one is it wouldn't be an episode of Upgrade

02:03:00   without me mentioning, "Uh, mailbox.

02:03:03   "Come on, guys.

02:03:04   "Is there any signs of life here?"

02:03:06   - I feel like it's just over.

02:03:07   I feel like there's--

02:03:08   - There's long-standing bugs with that.

02:03:10   And the way that it does stuff with text selection,

02:03:13   I don't think it's ever quoted correctly.

02:03:15   - Dropbox should never have bought it

02:03:16   because they seem to have no intent

02:03:17   to actually do anything with it.

02:03:19   It's too bad. - Well, it's a shame

02:03:20   'cause that's still the one I kind of,

02:03:22   out of my, what's the word, impulse or habit,

02:03:24   I always open up.

02:03:25   then I'm like, "I should really go use something else."

02:03:27   - Yeah, I know, it's too bad.

02:03:28   - But I mean, I guess that shows that there's still room

02:03:30   for somebody to excel in this.

02:03:32   The surprising part is that Outlook,

02:03:33   for somebody who wants to be a grownup with their email,

02:03:35   Outlook is really good.

02:03:36   - It actually, it is, you should give it a try.

02:03:39   - Speed master.

02:03:40   - Speed master!

02:03:42   So, this next, it's our last bit of feedback.

02:03:45   It's from listener Spencer, who asks,

02:03:47   "What is your oldest piece of equipment currently in use,

02:03:51   "software or hardware, and why hasn't it been upgraded?"

02:03:55   This is such a good question. You guys did this on clockwise a few months ago, and it got me really thinking about it.

02:04:00   I'm sitting here trying to... we may have to do a little bit of round-robin on this. I'll throw one out.

02:04:05   We have an Airport Express from I don't know when that we're still using to extend our network.

02:04:11   What's one of yours?

02:04:11   I'll see.

02:04:14   Do you have a really definitive answer for this?

02:04:16   I'll see you and raise you though, while I'm thinking.

02:04:19   the airport we have an airport extreme that is the old classic square the baking tile

02:04:27   the big boy yeah and not the tall the leader from the Incredible Hulk giant forehead laughably

02:04:36   tall base station that they have now right which I refuse to buy because it is ridiculous

02:04:42   it is they have one and if and it's got well it's got room for a hard drive but if you

02:04:45   know what the time capsule it's just empty space it's just why anyway because

02:04:49   they didn't want to make two enclosures so it's antennas right doesn't have

02:04:52   isn't it good for yes I that's what they say I don't know I don't know I'm still

02:04:56   using my old one in fact I got I got a fancy router that I that I saw on the

02:05:01   wire cutter that they said was pretty good and I used it for like two weeks

02:05:05   and it kept dropping all my Macs would drop off all my devices would drop off

02:05:08   it was infuriating and the reason I bought it is because it's got traffic

02:05:12   prioritization because we were it used to be when I did a podcast I basically

02:05:16   told my family no streaming of anything

02:05:18   oh that's terrific links is you could use to be a links is firmware thing you

02:05:21   could do to do the bit like bandwidth shaping yeah yeah so it's got it's this

02:05:24   this router has a built-in so basically now all the Wi-Fi is turned off on it

02:05:28   all it does is do my network routing and prioritize my my iMac so that I can do

02:05:36   podcasting while my kids are trying to stream Netflix and the Wi-Fi in the

02:05:41   the house is still being routed by that old airport base station because it's really reliable

02:05:49   in that. It just doesn't do any of the traffic prioritization stuff that I needed from it.

02:05:53   So that's old tech. I'm trying to think if there's other old tech that I've got. I replaced

02:06:02   my Mac Mini. My Mac Mini is attached to this flat screen that I got. It's a little like

02:06:06   15-inch LCD monitor that I got like eight years ago, maybe even older than that. And

02:06:13   it's a little server and I very rarely turn on the screen and I usually do it with screen

02:06:17   sharing like from my iPad or from my Mac. But I do have this little monitor attached

02:06:23   to it that is still kicking around after all this time.

02:06:26   I'm so glad things still last like that.

02:06:29   Yeah, some things.

02:06:30   Let's see, I got a couple here.

02:06:33   The iPad 2 my daughter still uses every day.

02:06:37   She listens to Harry Potter on it every night, plays card wars and Minecraft on it every

02:06:41   day.

02:06:42   But you know what?

02:06:44   Here's my famous one.

02:06:45   Now the story can be told.

02:06:47   Until a couple months ago when I got an iMac, I was using a 2006 Mac Pro with two read-only

02:06:57   DVD drives.

02:06:59   No wait, not DVD, CD, two read-only CD jobs.

02:07:04   Oh, so you could rip two albums at once.

02:07:06   I don't know what I was thinking.

02:07:08   At one point I actually bought the expansion kit from OWC, where I could turn that into

02:07:15   another drive bay.

02:07:17   But man, that thing was a soldier.

02:07:19   It stuck with me.

02:07:20   All the lights were lit up.

02:07:21   I remember telling Marco, "Oh, I think this is bad."

02:07:22   I had the door off the Mac, which John Sirakusa hates.

02:07:25   And I could see red lights on the cars, and he was like, "Um, that shouldn't even be working

02:07:28   at this point. So I got every nickel out of that. It was good to me. I will miss you,

02:07:35   Dexter. You were a good computer.

02:07:36   So I have one more, which is 2008 vintage slim devices came out with, or it might have

02:07:43   been just when they got bought by Logitech. They came out with the SqueezeBox Boom, part

02:07:47   of their SqueezeBox network music player, which has now been discontinued. But I have

02:07:54   three SqueezeBox booms that I kept collecting from people who no longer

02:07:57   wanted them. And I also have a couple other SqueezeBox players. We've got one

02:08:02   that is attached to the speakers in my living room. And, you know, they

02:08:07   don't do Apple Music, they don't do Rhapsody anymore. I think they might

02:08:10   still do Spotify. So the whole... it's an open source server, so it still works and

02:08:14   it'll still play all my local music, but anything I've got on Apple Music will

02:08:19   not play, right? So it's getting near the end of its life, but the

02:08:22   Squeezebox Boom is great because like the iPod HiFi that I also have sitting on my desk,

02:08:28   they have an AUX-IN port. So the Squeezebox Boom, it's a pretty nice set of stereo speakers,

02:08:34   so it will stream internet audio, I can listen to ATP on it, it will playback any of the

02:08:40   MP3s on my server, and I can just attach my iPhone to it and play a podcast or whatever.

02:08:47   You could do an AirPort Express also. I could, and I have done that, and I've also got a

02:08:50   little Bluetooth adapter that occasionally I'll attach to one and I can just Bluetooth

02:08:53   things to it. So they have a longer life and the iPod Hi-Fi is the same way. It's my set

02:09:00   of computer speakers at my desk. They're good speakers. I mean, the iPod dock on the top

02:09:06   is ridiculous and not supported, but it's got an aux jack in the back. It's a standard

02:09:10   – you know, the standard 3.5-inch headphone jack is a pretty great universal thing. I

02:09:16   think a company would be stupid to not put one on its products.

02:09:20   I can't imagine. I think we'll probably have that forever.

02:09:23   I think that Jack will live forever. I'm gonna go ahead and say it.

02:09:26   There's absolutely no chance that we will ever not have that.

02:09:31   You think that'll happen?

02:09:34   This edition of Upgrade has been brought to you by

02:09:38   Linda, MailRoute, and Making Light. Thank you so much to them, and thank you so much

02:09:42   to Merlin Mann. Thank you for being my guest host while Myke

02:09:46   is stealing stationery from Tiffany Arment.

02:09:50   - Oh, thank you very much for having me.

02:09:51   I am a huge fan of your show.

02:09:52   I never miss it.

02:09:53   You're one of the very few shows where, well, no, for real.

02:09:56   I listen to it live and I listen to it when it comes out.

02:09:58   So it's an honor to be here.

02:10:00   Thank you.

02:10:01   - Thank you for me.

02:10:02   You don't have to listen to this one.

02:10:03   - I probably won't.

02:10:04   - You've already heard it.

02:10:06   - Let's have a look at the music.

02:10:07   (upbeat music)

02:10:10   [Music]