Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 64. Today's show is brought to you

00:00:13 ◼   ► by Braintree,

00:00:14 ◼   ► TextExpander, Hover,

00:00:16 ◼   ► and igloo. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snow.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi Myke, how's it going? I'm very well Mr. Snow, how are you today?

00:00:24 ◼   ► Pretty good. Busy, busy time, busy week.

00:00:26 ◼   ► lots of iPad Pro business and we had a busy show last week and I think we're gonna have

00:00:31 ◼   ► another busy show this week.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Yep, we're gonna look at the movies later on today.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Everyone's favorite segment.

00:00:37 ◼   ► But we do have to do some follow-up and one of the most important pieces of follow-up

00:00:41 ◼   ► this week is bringing Serenity Korbla back onto the show. Hi Wren.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Hi.

00:00:45 ◼   ► So we wanted to do some Apple Pencil follow-up because now both me and Wren have pencils.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Because we have them.

00:00:53 ◼   ► The big idea last week was that I was going to rely on you guys to tell me about the Apple

00:00:57 ◼   ► Pencil. And so we set it all up and nobody could get a pencil. And so we sort of looked at me and

00:01:04 ◼   ► I was like, I don't know, but now you both have Apple Pencils. So this is perfect because I can

00:01:10 ◼   ► listen to you who actually care about these things in a way that I will never care. Talk about the

00:01:17 ◼   ► Apple Pencil. So, Wren, you now have acquired your own pencil and you've

00:01:23 ◼   ► You've been doing some drawing and stuff with it.

00:01:25 ◼   ► How are you finding the Apple Pencil

00:01:27 ◼   ► for the type of stuff that you'd like to do digitally

00:01:30 ◼   ► from an artistic perspective?

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Well, I have to prevent myself from squeaking

00:01:36 ◼   ► on the air right now,

00:01:38 ◼   ► 'cause that's how I feel about the Apple Pencil.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Honestly, I've been drawing digitally for about 16 years,

00:01:45 ◼   ► which seems insane to me, by the way.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And I started with trackpad drawing

00:01:50 ◼   ► and I progressed to Wacom tablets.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And when the iPad came out, I did a very--

00:01:54 ◼   ► I've used a variety of styluses.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And I think we talked about this last week, where

00:01:58 ◼   ► there's a lot to be desired from digital drawing.

00:02:03 ◼   ► You can't really replicate the feeling of drawing on paper.

00:02:07 ◼   ► It's just not going to happen when you have a glass screen or even

00:02:10 ◼   ► a plastic screen.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So the manufacturers have to focus on other aspects.

00:02:17 ◼   ► They have to focus on the lag and the latency being very small, and they have to make sure

00:02:23 ◼   ► that the pressure just feels right.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And the Apple Pencil has managed to nail both of these things better, as good as Wacom,

00:02:34 ◼   ► or if not very, very close.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I've found that like, so it's still clicky, right?

00:02:41 ◼   ► Because it's still plastic on glass.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I've noticed that when I'm... because I come at this from a more of a handwriting perspective,

00:02:48 ◼   ► so maybe I'm kind of lifting and putting down the pencil more frequently, right?

00:02:54 ◼   ► So it does make a tapping sound, which isn't as nice, but fundamentally this is better

00:02:59 ◼   ► than anything that I've used as well.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And I actually wrote a review of one of the... maybe one or two articles I write in a year.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I wrote a review for The Pen Addict from the perspective of somebody who is interested

00:03:13 ◼   ► in using the pencil for handwriting. And I have to say that fundamentally this thing

00:03:19 ◼   ► is extremely good for handwriting skills. Like to use as something to take digital notes

00:03:28 ◼   ► more than anything else ever has been before. Like you don't have to zoom in to a specific

00:03:32 ◼   ► area so you can write in a way that's basically not every word filling up an eighth of the

00:03:37 ◼   ► screen. The precision that the Apple Pencil is able to give is kind of incredible. Like

00:03:42 ◼   ► I can write smaller than it seems that the pencil can actually pick up.

00:03:47 ◼   ► So like I'm making movements, which are my regular hand movements, but the

00:03:52 ◼   ► pencil tip seems conceivably too thick to make the tiny, tiny text that I'm able to

00:03:57 ◼   ► get from it.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Like I am incredibly impressed with how responsive and precise this thing is from

00:04:04 ◼   ► a handwriting perspective.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Well, you think about the other iPad styluses when previously we were trying

00:04:09 ◼   ► to write reasonably sized letters with those big gigantic nibs.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And even that you could get kind of a simulation of handwriting, but it was just terrible.

00:04:18 ◼   ► And you know, despite the fact that I use this primarily for drawing, handwriting is

00:04:21 ◼   ► always the first thing I test with a stylus because it tells me very quickly how just

00:04:26 ◼   ► how responsive the pen is going to be and how precise the pen is going to be.

00:04:32 ◼   ► Because it's a much better real world test for having to trace over lines.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And it is one of the first things I tried with the pencil was writing in big letters,

00:04:40 ◼   ► writing in smaller letters, and writing in the smallest possible letters that I could

00:04:44 ◼   ► think of.

00:04:46 ◼   ► And not only was it able to write in what I would call four or five point font, but

00:04:50 ◼   ► I was able to outline and trace over those letters with pinpoint precision, which has

00:04:55 ◼   ► never happened for a digital stylist that I've used.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Again, Wacom comes close.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But the Cintiq, I mean the Cintiq line has always felt big and clunky and overburdened

00:05:08 ◼   ► to me.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Where it's like, okay, there's this big giant display and it's heavy and it has to be tethered

00:05:13 ◼   ► to your computer.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And the tablet interface is unfortunately terrible.

00:05:18 ◼   ► You know, the Cintiq Companion I just wasn't impressed by as a portable solution.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And here's this thing.

00:05:24 ◼   ► This thing is probably half the weight of the Cintiq Companion and has a retina screen

00:05:29 ◼   ► and can connect to your Mac via AstroPad.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And you can take notes on it on the go and it just, I don't know.

00:05:36 ◼   ► The more I work with the iPad Pro, especially when paired with the pencil, the more impressed

00:05:40 ◼   ► I am.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I was drawing a birthday card for my little sister this morning.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And it was just one of those things where prior to this, if I wanted to do a full color

00:05:51 ◼   ► card for somebody, that would probably be nine or ten hours of work because I would

00:05:56 ◼   ► do the original sketch.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Then I would scan or take a photo of the sketch to put it on my device.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Then if I was working on an iPad, I would just have to suffer through at like 200% zoom

00:06:09 ◼   ► with one of my styluses and pray that the stroke coming out is the stroke I want.

00:06:15 ◼   ► If I was using Photoshop, then I'd have to hook up my Intuos to my laptop.

00:06:20 ◼   ► That would mean I'd have to bring my Intuos.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I'm on vacation right now, so that's extra stuff and heavy.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And then so much, so much effort.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Whereas the iPad, I did that in three hours.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And I've been doing, I did all of these drawings, I was on the plane, I did three or four live

00:06:37 ◼   ► sketches, some with some typography in under three hours.

00:06:41 ◼   ► I think I did three or four.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And that just, it feels like a real, it doesn't feel like a real pencil in terms of the plastic

00:06:49 ◼   ► on glass feeling.

00:06:50 ◼   ► That's not going to happen unless Apple figures out a way to make tactics fool your brain.

00:06:55 ◼   ► But it feels as close to a real sketchbook as you possibly can with a digital instrument.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And the thing that really excites me about this is that Apple's just getting started.

00:07:05 ◼   ► This is a 1.0 product, and it doesn't work the way that the Microsoft Surface does.

00:07:11 ◼   ► It doesn't work the way that the Wacom does.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's using an entirely new type of technology to try and achieve this, which means that

00:07:17 ◼   ► it can only get better from here.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And that is mind-blowing to me.

00:07:21 ◼   ► That is so exciting.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Because Wacom has been working at this for what, 20 years, 25 years now?

00:07:28 ◼   ► Apple's on year one publicly.

00:07:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the thing that blows me away as well, is that this is 1.0.

00:07:36 ◼   ► We've gone from me wanting something to me just having what I wanted.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But this is the thing that I've wanted since 2010 though, right?

00:07:44 ◼   ► Like I've wanted to be able to do this since the iPad was introduced, but only now am I

00:07:49 ◼   ► able to do it.

00:07:50 ◼   ► it's fine because now I've got what I want and it's perfect.

00:07:54 ◼   ► And it's perfect, exactly. It's not half fast.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I don't care that I had to wait.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's funny because I've been writing this sort of this experimental series on iMore

00:08:03 ◼   ► and people responded after my first day with the pencil being like,

00:08:06 ◼   ► "Yeah, but they should have done it three years ago."

00:08:08 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, you know what?

00:08:10 ◼   ► They started working on this three or four years ago because that's when we started to see patents."

00:08:14 ◼   ► And I like to get a 1.0 that's perfect,

00:08:17 ◼   ► I would have so much rather had a 1.0 that was perfect than get a 1.0 that was half-assed

00:08:23 ◼   ► and felt like every other stylus on the market.

00:08:26 ◼   ► The fact that Apple—and also, you know what?

00:08:27 ◼   ► I will defend—a lot of people are like, "Oh man, I love this.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Now I want it on an iPad Air or a Mini."

00:08:33 ◼   ► I can definitely see this coming to the iPad Air in future installments, but I will defend

00:08:38 ◼   ► the 12.9-inch screen with my life the more I use it with the Pro.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Because for sketching, it is the perfect size.

00:08:46 ◼   ► It really is.

00:08:47 ◼   ► It's sketchbook sized.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And even for writing, you turn it in portrait and then all of a sudden you have a clipboard

00:08:52 ◼   ► that you can write on.

00:08:54 ◼   ► It feels so good in my hand.

00:08:56 ◼   ► And I feel like I'm just heaping praise on this.

00:09:00 ◼   ► There are definitely things that it doesn't do perfectly.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But I don't know, I'm just so impressed that Apple was able to do this and make it work

00:09:09 ◼   ► so well.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And even in third party apps, even third party apps that haven't taken full advantage of

00:09:15 ◼   ► the APIs that Apple's now included for the pencil, it still works well.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Saying about the perfection thing, we both keep saying it's perfect, and you touched

00:09:24 ◼   ► on it a little bit.

00:09:26 ◼   ► When I say it's perfect, the result is perfect.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I actually think the hardware, the Apple Pencil itself, was an incredible feat.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Like I was listening to Jason and John on the talk show just before we started, and

00:09:36 ◼   ► the idea that it just works.

00:09:38 ◼   ► You just pick it up and it works, you plug it in and it charges.

00:09:41 ◼   ► There are a couple of things that leave a little bit to be desired.

00:09:45 ◼   ► For me personally, I think the fact that it is just a cylinder, it doesn't work for me.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I really wish that they would have put a flat edge on this thing or a clip.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And I know, I talk about it in the piece that I wrote.

00:09:57 ◼   ► The way that Apple tried to combat this is to put magnets in the pencil.

00:10:00 ◼   ► So when you put it down it shouldn't roll away.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But what I've found is, if you put it down quickly, like if you drop it down on the desk,

00:10:08 ◼   ► which is something I do, like I'm writing, I just put it down.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Like I don't place, I put it down.

00:10:12 ◼   ► If you put it down with any force, the magnets can end up giving the pencil momentum to move

00:10:16 ◼   ► further, right?

00:10:17 ◼   ► And it just like, off it goes.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Like it's just running away from me.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Which is, you know, I can see why they did it because the magnets also serve a dual purpose

00:10:26 ◼   ► because, well the bytes are magnets, right?

00:10:28 ◼   ► So they sort of serve that kind of that dual purpose in the device.

00:10:32 ◼   ► I would have liked to have seen a clip.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to what will inevitably be third party clips, right?

00:10:36 ◼   ► I just feel like they're going to come.

00:10:38 ◼   ► There are already Kickstarters.

00:10:39 ◼   ► I don't doubt that.

00:10:40 ◼   ► There are probably already just pencil clips and pen clips for other devices, for other

00:10:44 ◼   ► pens and pencils that you can just clip on the scene and it will work.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But it's just, you know, we're completely gushing about this because for people that

00:10:51 ◼   ► care about this thing, it does exactly what we need.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And one of the things that I keep coming back to is this thing is so perfect, why is it

00:11:02 ◼   ► so difficult for me to get it?

00:11:03 ◼   ► I haven't even mentioned how I got this yet.

00:11:05 ◼   ► They're still not in London.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Marco Arment bought one of these for me and FedExed it from New York.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And somehow it got to you.

00:11:13 ◼   ► That's how I was able to get my hands on one of these things.

00:11:16 ◼   ► There's still, I'm talking to people in London still about this, like in the business teams,

00:11:22 ◼   ► they're still not available anywhere in London.

00:11:25 ◼   ► And it's like this thing is so amazing and I'm talking about it, everybody's writing

00:11:28 ◼   ► about it, everyone's saying how incredible it is, but nobody can actually buy one still.

00:11:32 ◼   ► That problem still remains.

00:11:34 ◼   ► And it's a little bit shocking to me that Apple, it's shocking to me how poorly this

00:11:40 ◼   ► rolled out.

00:11:41 ◼   ► But my guess is something happened with quality control, where there was just a huge batch

00:11:47 ◼   ► of pencils that something was wrong.

00:11:51 ◼   ► And when it comes down to it, just like, would I have rather they shipped it two years ago

00:11:55 ◼   ► or would I would I rather they shipped it today?

00:11:58 ◼   ► I would much rather pencils get shipped that didn't have terrible defects in them, because

00:12:03 ◼   ► then you're looking at a bunch of people who are really upset

00:12:05 ◼   ► and they're like, oh, these reviewers told me

00:12:07 ◼   ► this pencil is perfect, but then I pulled it out of the box

00:12:10 ◼   ► and it has terrible lag, or the pencil tip falls off,

00:12:12 ◼   ► or the cap-- you know what?

00:12:14 ◼   ► I honestly wouldn't be surprised if shoddy caps were

00:12:18 ◼   ► what stopped the whole thing, because I'm still

00:12:20 ◼   ► frustrated with the cap.

00:12:21 ◼   ► That's one thing we're talking about, build quality.

00:12:24 ◼   ► The weight of the pencil feels amazing.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I love the length.

00:12:27 ◼   ► It's actually the exact same size as one of my HB pencils,

00:12:30 ◼   ► which I need to photograph at some point, which

00:12:33 ◼   ► is so funny to me. But the lack of a clip is annoying. And the stupid cap. I had what

00:12:43 ◼   ► felt like a near death experience where I moved into, I was coming into the RV, you

00:12:49 ◼   ► know, where we're staying for vacation, and I dropped all of my stuff on the floor. And

00:12:54 ◼   ► then I was I picked up my pencil and the cap was gone. And I had this like, my heart leapt

00:12:59 ◼   ► in my chest and I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm never gonna find it again!" And luckily, it

00:13:04 ◼   ► wasn't that far away. But I'm like, "This thing could just fall off and I could never

00:13:08 ◼   ► see it again." And then I just have this ugly little lightning nib that I'm gonna snap off

00:13:13 ◼   ► inevitably. So that is very frustrating to me. And also, I will say, I love the fact

00:13:19 ◼   ► that you can charge it with the iPad. Because I was drawing—I forget, I was drawing the

00:13:24 ◼   ► other night while watching Jessica Jones and not close to any of my chargers. And I got

00:13:28 ◼   ► a blip on the screen that was like, "Apple Pencil is down to 5%!"

00:13:32 ◼   ► So all I did was I stuck the pencil into the iPad and set it aside for 10 minutes and that

00:13:37 ◼   ► charged it up to like 45%.

00:13:40 ◼   ► That kind of thing is really, it's a really smart idea.

00:13:43 ◼   ► But Apple, you have a smart connector on the iPad.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Why lightning and not the smart connector?

00:13:51 ◼   ► Maybe it's just the quick charge wouldn't work quite as well, but sticking the pencil

00:13:56 ◼   ► out of the device just does feel very awkward.

00:13:59 ◼   ► As cool as it is.

00:14:00 ◼   ► It's still goofy.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And very precarious.

00:14:05 ◼   ► My boyfriend almost snapped it off while we were sitting on the couch and charging it.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I'm like, "Ah, okay."

00:14:11 ◼   ► One thing that I find weird about that is it doesn't sit flush.

00:14:16 ◼   ► No, it doesn't. It pops out a little bit.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Yeah, which I really don't like that part.

00:14:20 ◼   ► It's crazy enough not having to do this, but it wobbles in there.

00:14:24 ◼   ► it doesn't go all the way in and that freaks me out. But I will say

00:14:29 ◼   ► the same thing. I was taking some notes earlier and I noticed it was down to 10%

00:14:32 ◼   ► I was just gonna take a break for a bit I just plugged it in 10 minutes later

00:14:36 ◼   ► and it's at like 60% just like well I mean you know it's like I get why

00:14:41 ◼   ► they're doing it this way but it you know it still kind of is a little bit

00:14:44 ◼   ► like ah but it does work right so and it's the way I would do it is I have the

00:14:48 ◼   ► device with me I'll just plug it in it basically takes no power away from the

00:14:52 ◼   ► iPad to charge the thing, it works, but it's still super freaky as a thing to do.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. That's the part of it that really feels like a 1.0 to me. And again,

00:15:03 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if the cap is what's holding up a lot of pencil shipments. I ended

00:15:10 ◼   ► up getting one, ironically, I had the PR team finally send me one, and then it got delayed

00:15:18 ◼   ► because of a crazy shipping malfunction.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So I ran, I heard that pencils in the Northeast

00:15:24 ◼   ► might have gotten around.

00:15:26 ◼   ► So I ran to the nearest, my nearest store

00:15:29 ◼   ► and they had like eight on display.

00:15:31 ◼   ► And it took all of my gumption not to buy all eight

00:15:34 ◼   ► and send them to various people that I knew who wanted them.

00:15:37 ◼   ► But I just, I ended up just getting one.

00:15:39 ◼   ► And then the other one came the next day.

00:15:41 ◼   ► So now I have two pencils,

00:15:43 ◼   ► but one is still in the box because I feel like.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Yeah, when mine arrived, I was like, "Great, I'll cancel my order."

00:15:50 ◼   ► So I cancelled my online order and now I've regretted it because I'm like, "Oh, I'm going

00:15:53 ◼   ► to lose this.

00:15:54 ◼   ► I'm going to lose it, I'm going to break it, and then my life's going to be over."

00:15:57 ◼   ► So I know I need to track one down now.

00:16:00 ◼   ► So I'm probably going to do that.

00:16:01 ◼   ► I need a spare.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like I need a spare because this has so quickly become an integral part of

00:16:07 ◼   ► my workflow that if I lose this or break it, I'm going to be so sad because it's so nice.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I have sketched more in the past four days than I have sketched in three years.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It's fluid, it's natural.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I wrote 3,000 words on it on iMore just because it's so easy to and I haven't even done thorough

00:16:32 ◼   ► handwriting.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I've been doing typography with my drawings, but Myke, it sounds like it's really phenomenal.

00:16:39 ◼   ► We haven't even talked about palm rejection, how good palm rejection is.

00:16:43 ◼   ► It's magical.

00:16:44 ◼   ► So this is the thing, right?

00:16:45 ◼   ► So one of the issues that I've always had with palm rejection, like the palm rejection

00:16:48 ◼   ► that people build in software is I'm left-handed.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And it tends to be that there may be left-handed modes, but they tend not to get the same amount

00:16:55 ◼   ► of care and love.

00:16:56 ◼   ► But the palm rejection, like I was just testing this, like I was just drawing a line on the

00:16:59 ◼   ► pencil and running my other hand all over the iPad and nothing happens.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It's like the pencil is the only thing that's recognized.

00:17:07 ◼   ► It works perfectly.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like the handwriting, it's just, you know, I write with this thing and it looks the way

00:17:13 ◼   ► I would expect it to look and that is the most important part for me.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And the palm rejection is 100% perfect for me.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I like lay on this thing and write like the same way

00:17:23 ◼   ► that I would be laying on a table and writing.

00:17:25 ◼   ► But there's one other point, though, that I find really interesting,

00:17:29 ◼   ► which is using the pencil as an input method for the iPad forced up.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Yes. Like I sit and just use the I use the iPad

00:17:40 ◼   ► with a pen. Like it is for stylists constantly and it works great because

00:17:44 ◼   ► there are some things where the precision really helps like text

00:17:47 ◼   ► selection like hitting a word and dragging the the pointers is way easier

00:17:51 ◼   ► with the pencil. I sit and like scroll lists in Tweetbot and one of the reasons

00:17:55 ◼   ► this is so comfortable for me is for the last maybe month I've been using a

00:17:59 ◼   ► Intuos tablet a Wacom Intuos tablet to control my iMac. Like that is how I now

00:18:05 ◼   ► interact with my iMac so it works so perfectly for me to pick up the pencil

00:18:09 ◼   ► so I can interact with my iPad in that way.

00:18:12 ◼   ► One thing that I tried that I liked

00:18:14 ◼   ► was I installed the SwiftKey keyboard

00:18:17 ◼   ► and I was using the swipe stuff

00:18:18 ◼   ► like as a way to type out messages.

00:18:20 ◼   ► You just swipe it, but keyboard support on the iPad

00:18:23 ◼   ► sucks so bad that you kind of don't want

00:18:25 ◼   ► to really use it seriously.

00:18:26 ◼   ► But like eventually when they fix the keyboard problem,

00:18:30 ◼   ► it will work even better for me.

00:18:31 ◼   ► But like I've just been really pleased

00:18:34 ◼   ► with just using this device with a pencil

00:18:38 ◼   ► and it works so great for me to just like tap this piece of UI, drag this over here,

00:18:43 ◼   ► drop it down, type something with both hands, pick it back up.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I could not be happier and it is complete.

00:18:50 ◼   ► I mean, I already love the iPad Pro, but now it's like a whole next level.

00:18:54 ◼   ► The pencil makes more of a difference to the iPad Pro to me than any hardware

00:19:00 ◼   ► keyboard ever will. Whereas the hardware keyboards, they're nice for writing.

00:19:05 ◼   ► But you're absolutely right.

00:19:06 ◼   ► It's funny to me because I think of the pencil

00:19:09 ◼   ► as very much an old world device, right?

00:19:11 ◼   ► Pens are one of the earliest things we moved to after touch.

00:19:16 ◼   ► It's like, okay, now we're cave painting.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Oh, hey, we can sharpen a stick and then write with it.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Hey, that works.

00:19:22 ◼   ► So it's so funny to me that we're going back

00:19:25 ◼   ► to that sort of integral, we're holding an input device,

00:19:29 ◼   ► but we're also using our fingers.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And we also have the opportunity to use the keyboard.

00:19:33 ◼   ► And it really gives like what I love about the iPad Pro right now is that it's giving you the option to choose

00:19:39 ◼   ► Which input device is best for you at what particular point and I absolutely agree with you about the input people being like me

00:19:48 ◼   ► Mmm stylus is blah blah blah doomed

00:19:50 ◼   ► Can go just sit in a corner because here's the thing some people, you know

00:19:55 ◼   ► Some people don't want to touch the screen all the time

00:19:58 ◼   ► or you're right, absolutely the precision.

00:20:01 ◼   ► I've been using the pencil to do a lot of video editing.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And what's really, really cool about iMovie on the iPad Pro,

00:20:08 ◼   ► and it is very limited,

00:20:10 ◼   ► but there are some really great gestures

00:20:13 ◼   ► that allow you to do things

00:20:16 ◼   ► that you would normally just use keyboard commands for.

00:20:19 ◼   ► And one of those things is cutting up clips.

00:20:21 ◼   ► You swipe down to cut a clip in two.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And I've been using the pencil to cut and move clips around

00:20:26 ◼   ► with no problems whatsoever.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And I love it. And I also, I love that you can use both the pencil and touch

00:20:32 ◼   ► gestures. You know, you can do multiple things at once with it.

00:20:35 ◼   ► And it's just, I don't know, it feels so natural.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And the fact that this is 1.0 just makes me so excited for

00:20:43 ◼   ► all of Apple's problems with 1.0 products in the last year.

00:20:47 ◼   ► They're like, we're going to mess up everything else, but the pencil is going to be

00:20:52 ◼   ► the one good 1.0 product.

00:20:54 ◼   ► You just wait, guys. It's all going to be OK.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Now that's how I feel like, you know, we've had so many things on the show

00:21:00 ◼   ► recently that have made us sad and angry.

00:21:02 ◼   ► Um, but this one, you know, it's, it's filling me with the joy and delight

00:21:06 ◼   ► that Apple products should and have done for so many years.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And even if you're not a sketch, like someone who draws or someone

00:21:14 ◼   ► who writes with any regularity, I really think you should go give a pencil a shot.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Like people listening, if you can find one and even just in the demo room,

00:21:22 ◼   ► it's so funny to me because I've been giving, you know, I've had my iPad

00:21:25 ◼   ► I'd purl around and people are like, "Oh, hey, that's a thing."

00:21:29 ◼   ► And I'll hand the pencil to them and step one I say, "You can put your hand on the screen."

00:21:33 ◼   ► Because inevitably they start to try and write curved around.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, put your hand on the screen."

00:21:40 ◼   ► And then I say, "Try writing."

00:21:42 ◼   ► Because they automatically dismiss writing as something that you could even do with the

00:21:45 ◼   ► pencil.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And their face, like everybody I've handed this to, their faces light up in a way that's

00:21:52 ◼   ► really, really impressive to me.

00:21:55 ◼   ► The original iPad made some people really excited.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Some of my friends really excited and some people were just like, whatever.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The pencil, everybody I have tried this is like, Oh my gosh, I could use this.

00:22:07 ◼   ► I need this.

00:22:08 ◼   ► This is awesome.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Like it's universal joy, which is really awesome.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Well done.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm, we could probably do this forever.

00:22:17 ◼   ► But I'm concerned Jason's actually just left the room now.

00:22:20 ◼   ► I know Jason's like, I'm bored.

00:22:22 ◼   ► He's sleeping.

00:22:23 ◼   ► I'm getting a lot of other unrelated work done right now, so thank you.

00:22:28 ◼   ► There you go.

00:22:29 ◼   ► I did want to say really quickly before we wrap up, I tested the Microsoft Surface Book

00:22:37 ◼   ► and Surface Pro 4 against the iPad Pro.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Not really against, it was more like I visited the Windows Central offices and was like,

00:22:44 ◼   ► "Hey guys, let me draw on your Surface Book for a little while."

00:22:48 ◼   ► Because I know some artists who have a Surface right now and are like, "Well, I just spent

00:22:52 ◼   ► this money? Should I go over to an iPad Pro? What's different? What's awesome? The Surface

00:22:58 ◼   ► is still pretty good. The Ntrig technology that powers the Surface's pen is actually

00:23:04 ◼   ► not bad. But I think the Pencil wins hands down in writing, just absolutely. Even though

00:23:13 ◼   ► the Surface runs a full operating system, I think that there's so much you can do with

00:23:18 ◼   ► the iPad as is and then also you introduce apps like AstroPad which turn your display

00:23:24 ◼   ► into a second screen specifically for artist work.

00:23:28 ◼   ► So using Photoshop or any app that has those kinds of compatible tools.

00:23:34 ◼   ► There's a lot of ways to work around this and there are great native apps on the iPad

00:23:39 ◼   ► that you can start a drawing, say in Procreate and export it to Photoshop if you really need

00:23:42 ◼   ► to finish in Photoshop.

00:23:45 ◼   ► I don't necessarily know if people should trash their Surface and immediately run out

00:23:49 ◼   ► and buy an iPad.

00:23:50 ◼   ► The Surface is still a pretty good tablet.

00:23:53 ◼   ► But I think it's a difference between, "Microsoft, you did a pretty good job.

00:23:58 ◼   ► This is not a bad tablet."

00:24:00 ◼   ► And it's an interesting concept to, "The iPad Pro is the device that I want to carry around.

00:24:04 ◼   ► The Pencil is the device that I would, hands down, buy this in a second, not look back."

00:24:09 ◼   ► About a shadow of a doubt.

00:24:10 ◼   ► No, I'm sure you're going to continue writing tons of great stuff on iMore.com about all

00:24:15 ◼   ► of this. So much, so much. Wren, thank you so much for joining me because Jason

00:24:20 ◼   ► wouldn't have given me this level of excitement back. I'm here for you

00:24:25 ◼   ► Myke by bringing in other people to be here for you. Wren, thank you so much for

00:24:29 ◼   ► joining us. Where else can people find you online? Thanks, Myke. I can be

00:24:34 ◼   ► found at @Sattern on Twitter and Instagram and of course on iMore

00:24:39 ◼   ► every single day where I'll be writing and drawing lots about the iPad Pro and

00:24:44 ◼   ► Pencil. Thank you, Ran. Thank you.

00:24:46 ◼   ► All right, Jason, let me take a quick break and thank our first

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00:26:22 ◼   ► So Jason, would you feel better now

00:26:25 ◼   ► if we spoke about some kind of clicky keyboard for a while?

00:26:27 ◼   ► Would that make you feel a little bit better?

00:26:29 ◼   ► - We talked about the keyboard a lot last time.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It's fine, it's good.

00:26:33 ◼   ► We're still in the follow-up too, do you realize that?

00:26:35 ◼   ► - I am fully aware of that.

00:26:36 ◼   ► That was like a, we'll have to come up with some new name

00:26:39 ◼   ► for what we just did.

00:26:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:26:41 ◼   ► That's another John Sirakusen not approved adjective to use

00:26:46 ◼   ► to describe this thing or preposition, I guess.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Follow over.

00:26:50 ◼   ► - But there is a piece of follow up.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Yes, there was special guest follow up.

00:26:54 ◼   ► It's good, it's exciting.

00:26:55 ◼   ► - Special guest follow up.

00:26:56 ◼   ► There we go, we got it.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Nice work.

00:26:58 ◼   ► There was something from a couple of weeks ago

00:27:00 ◼   ► that we mentioned that you ended up digging up,

00:27:01 ◼   ► which was you mentioned in passing a week,

00:27:04 ◼   ► Or was it a month where Apple basically announced something

00:27:07 ◼   ► every day, right?

00:27:09 ◼   ► Oh, it was even longer than that.

00:27:11 ◼   ► It was a long, long stretch of time

00:27:13 ◼   ► where they kept on-- every Tuesday,

00:27:16 ◼   ► there'd be another press release that would drop.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And at some point, we mentioned to the PR people, hey,

00:27:22 ◼   ► it's been three or four weeks in a row with press releases.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And they said, we're just getting started.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's going to be a busy year.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And we all looked at each other like, seriously?

00:27:29 ◼   ► And sure enough, the next week, another press release,

00:27:31 ◼   ► and the next week, another press release.

00:27:33 ◼   ► went on seemingly forever.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - And they have an awful stuff.

00:27:37 ◼   ► What are some of your favorite highlights

00:27:38 ◼   ► from 2008's press release madness?

00:27:41 ◼   ► - So 2008, it turns out, I did dig around

00:27:44 ◼   ► and find that 2008 was the right time.

00:27:46 ◼   ► 2008, at the beginning of the year, let's see,

00:27:51 ◼   ► they, on the 8th of January, they introduced a new Mac Pro

00:27:54 ◼   ► and they introduced the Xserve.

00:27:55 ◼   ► On the 15th, they introduced the MacBook Air time capsule.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I think this is basically a Mac World Expo keynote.

00:28:05 ◼   ► iPhone software update, iPod touch software update,

00:28:09 ◼   ► Apple TV software update.

00:28:11 ◼   ► That was the Mac World Expo keynote.

00:28:14 ◼   ► On the 22nd of January, they added a pink iPod nano.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - Big deal, seriously.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - But seriously, that was one of those things

00:28:26 ◼   ► where it's like, we need a press release this week,

00:28:28 ◼   ► but we're really tired from Mac World Expo.

00:28:30 ◼   ► What should we do?

00:28:31 ◼   ► just put the pink nano in the press release and that'll be fine. There's a whole press

00:28:34 ◼   ► release about "Apple adds pink to the iPod nano lineup." Literally, that is what the

00:28:39 ◼   ► press release is. Oh, these were innocent times. On January 30th, they announced that

00:28:44 ◼   ► the MacBook Air was shipping, after having announced it 15 days before. On February 5th,

00:28:50 ◼   ► they added new iPhone and iPod Touch models, which is that basically they did a 16 gig

00:28:59 ◼   ► iPhone and 32 version of the iPod touch. So they added some new sizes of the iPhone and

00:29:07 ◼   ► iPod touch. On the 12th, they released Aperture 2. On the 19th, they cut the price of the

00:29:13 ◼   ► iPod shuffle and introduced the X-San, which is their crazy storage thing for the X-Serve.

00:29:18 ◼   ► On the 26th, they introduced new MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

00:29:22 ◼   ► - Are you putting our listeners through the hell now that you had to go through? Is that

00:29:25 ◼   ► what's happening here?

00:29:26 ◼   ► Then it was March, Myke! And in March, March 6th, they did an iPhone 2.0 software beta.

00:29:34 ◼   ► March 12th, they did an announcement about how many developers had downloaded the iPhone

00:29:39 ◼   ► SDK. That was a light week, I guess. March 17th, they introduced the new Airport Express.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And the next day, they introduced a new version of Safari, a new version of Aperture on March

00:29:48 ◼   ► 28th. They did some iTunes stuff in the first week of April, so that was kind of a Slack

00:29:55 ◼   ► week, but there were two press releases that week anyway. The next week they announced

00:29:59 ◼   ► the Final Cut server was shipping. A couple weeks after that, they did their financial

00:30:05 ◼   ► results and the week after that, they updated the iMac. So it trailed off in April, but

00:30:11 ◼   ► January, February, March, pretty much every week we were scrambling on a Tuesday because

00:30:16 ◼   ► there was an Apple product rollout. It was pretty insane because... And we contrast that

00:30:21 ◼   ► with what has happened this fall where they had one event and they announced basically

00:30:27 ◼   ► everything and we've just been watching it roll out, which is a little bit of a different

00:30:32 ◼   ► strategy.

00:30:33 ◼   ► But then what was quite funny is the June, July of that year was probably one of the

00:30:38 ◼   ► most in history most important announcements that Apple ever made, which was the iPhone

00:30:43 ◼   ► 3G and the App Store and the SDK and all that sort of stuff all came in that year as well.

00:30:48 ◼   ► It's a huge, huge year.

00:30:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, 'cause yeah, you got the iPhone 3G

00:30:53 ◼   ► and they kept on rolling out the SDK

00:30:55 ◼   ► and then we had the big launch of the app store

00:30:59 ◼   ► and that all happened and then they took a nap.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, until the end of the year.

00:31:04 ◼   ► So it's quite funny, right?

00:31:05 ◼   ► We've been inundated over the last couple of months

00:31:09 ◼   ► with product releases, but 2008 is an example

00:31:12 ◼   ► that it all happened then, but just at the start of the year,

00:31:15 ◼   ► they just did everything.

00:31:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's funny 'cause in October of that year,

00:31:19 ◼   ► They did the unibody MacBook.

00:31:21 ◼   ► That was the first unibody MacBook was in October.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And then the big news, the big news, Myke,

00:31:27 ◼   ► in November, they hired Mark Papermaster.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - Everybody's favorite Papermaster.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Several months later, they fired.

00:31:35 ◼   ► And then to top it all off in December of that year,

00:31:39 ◼   ► that is when they cut all ties with Macworld

00:31:42 ◼   ► and announced it was their last year and all of that.

00:31:45 ◼   ► That was a, so it was an eventful year,

00:31:47 ◼   ► but a pretty crazy start to it.

00:31:49 ◼   ► The heady days of 2008, right?

00:31:52 ◼   ► Those were wild times.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Wild times.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Talking about wild times, you have gone ahead and launched a new subscription.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Would you call it a subscription?

00:32:01 ◼   ► How are you describing what you've done here with Six Colors?

00:32:04 ◼   ► Yeah, so a couple weeks ago I launched it.

00:32:06 ◼   ► This is the way for people, I've been hearing from the beginning that people wanted to support

00:32:10 ◼   ► me in doing Six Colors and they're not going to be sponsors because they don't have products

00:32:14 ◼   ► to sponsor or something like that, but they wanted to find some way to do it.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And I listened to that and then got really uncomfortable

00:32:20 ◼   ► about asking people for money for quite a while.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And then two weeks ago,

00:32:23 ◼   ► I launched what I'm calling Six Color Subscriptions.

00:32:26 ◼   ► I actually had a whole,

00:32:29 ◼   ► there's a whole thought process behind that, right?

00:32:31 ◼   ► About whether you call it subscriptions or memberships

00:32:32 ◼   ► or the club or what,

00:32:35 ◼   ► or support or patronage or something like that.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And I decided that subscription was what I wanted to say

00:32:42 ◼   ► partially, maybe that's my background

00:32:44 ◼   ► of working for a magazine for all that time.

00:32:46 ◼   ► But the idea is you are subscribing.

00:32:48 ◼   ► It is an ongoing relationship.

00:32:50 ◼   ► The reality is you are paying annual or monthly amount

00:32:55 ◼   ► of money to get some stuff.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And it does have the net effect of supporting the site,

00:33:00 ◼   ► but I wanted to not have it just be purely like,

00:33:04 ◼   ► give me money because you'll feel good about giving me money.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I wanted to have some other things around it.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So I just decided to sit on the wording of subscription

00:33:13 ◼   ► and subscriber and rather than like a membership and member,

00:33:16 ◼   ► which I thought about, I just, I, for whatever reason,

00:33:21 ◼   ► this is the, this is the one I was more comfortable with.

00:33:23 ◼   ► - That's the world you come from, I think.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I think that might be part of it.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Like, you know, subscription was the word that you used

00:33:30 ◼   ► in your brain to tie this thing together, right?

00:33:32 ◼   ► Magazines.

00:33:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, exactly right.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I, well, I decided to go with that theme too.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So rather than having a, like, I was gonna do a weekly

00:33:40 ◼   ► or a monthly newsletter, and Federico came out with Max Stories, Club Max Stories, and

00:33:47 ◼   ► the Max Stories Weekly Newsletter. And I thought, okay, well, do I really want to go down that

00:33:51 ◼   ► path of having something that sounds very much like what Federico did, even though,

00:33:56 ◼   ► you know, I was working on this before I ever heard that he was working on it. I just delayed

00:34:01 ◼   ► it forever, and his delay was less than mine. But I didn't want to seem like I was producing

00:34:06 ◼   ► the same thing as Federico because I just didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be

00:34:09 ◼   ► seen as a copycat. So I thought about the idea of calling, rather than calling it a

00:34:16 ◼   ► newsletter, calling it a magazine, you know, for reference point of where I come from and

00:34:23 ◼   ► also that it is a thing that you get, you know, in your box every so often. And by not

00:34:28 ◼   ► saying it's weekly or monthly, that gives me some latitude, you know, it's going to

00:34:32 ◼   ► be monthly at least, but we could decide to do it more often. And by calling it Six Colors

00:34:37 ◼   ► magazine, this newsletter that shows up in your box if you're a subscriber, then I had

00:34:43 ◼   ► the leeway to do that, to change the frequency of it as we see fit. So that all kind of was

00:34:48 ◼   ► in there. But, you know, rather than calling it a club that you could become a member of,

00:34:53 ◼   ► I decided to go with the other approach, again, because reasons, but still, yeah, that was

00:35:00 ◼   ► -- you're right, it does go back to sort of like this is the world that I'm from, but

00:35:03 ◼   ► I think more than that it's also the world that I'm somewhat identified with, and I kind

00:35:06 ◼   ► of wanted to play on that. So as well as the warm fuzzy feeling that you get for

00:35:12 ◼   ► supporting you and Dan, right, I assume this will also be helping support Dan

00:35:16 ◼   ► Morrow as well as Mr. Jason Snow. Well I mean I'm paying Dan to write for the

00:35:20 ◼   ► site and by having if I have more of a budget then then I can I can pay more to

00:35:25 ◼   ► Dan and he can help with the magazine newsletter thing and yes so yes is the

00:35:30 ◼   ► answer it's not direct because it's basically the way it works at Six Colors

00:35:34 ◼   ► is me and it's my company and then I pay Dan. Dan is basically a

00:35:40 ◼   ► contractor so more work for Dan is more money for Dan and that's I

00:35:44 ◼   ► think that Dan likes that and we like working together and we're it so

00:35:49 ◼   ► yeah. So as well as that warm fuzzy feeling people the perk if you would

00:35:54 ◼   ► call it is the magazine then right that is the little additional thing

00:35:57 ◼   ► that members will get as a thank you for being a member or a subscriber sorry. I

00:36:01 ◼   ► I wanted it to be, sure, whatever.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I wanted it, I just, I had this strong feeling

00:36:08 ◼   ► that I didn't want, I think the primary reason

00:36:11 ◼   ► you support a site or a podcast or whatever

00:36:14 ◼   ► is because you want to feel good about supporting it.

00:36:16 ◼   ► I think that is the number one reason you do it.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I didn't want a pure patronage thing where it's like,

00:36:23 ◼   ► look, please donate because you'll feel good.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I wanted, I wanna give something back.

00:36:28 ◼   ► I want there to be something that's part of it

00:36:29 ◼   ► that's tangible, even if it's not something,

00:36:32 ◼   ► even if people don't ever read the magazine,

00:36:35 ◼   ► the newsletter, whatever it ends up looking like,

00:36:38 ◼   ► even if they don't actually use that.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I was talking to Sean Blanc about this

00:36:42 ◼   ► because he's got a membership for his site.

00:36:44 ◼   ► And he said, you know, he does a podcast

00:36:49 ◼   ► and for members, which I'm not gonna do

00:36:51 ◼   ► because there are too many podcasts that I'm on already.

00:36:54 ◼   ► But I don't, he expressed to me some skepticism

00:36:59 ◼   ► about whether a lot of the members actually listen to the podcast, but it's good that

00:37:03 ◼   ► it's there. And I agree completely with that idea that psychologically, I think it's good

00:37:07 ◼   ► to feel like you get something out of it. That not only are you doing something good

00:37:11 ◼   ► and supportive for something you like, but you do get something in return, even if it's

00:37:15 ◼   ► not the, you know, if you didn't know who I was and you didn't care about what I do,

00:37:21 ◼   ► and entirely you're viewing it as a transaction that is, I give you money and you give me

00:37:25 ◼   ► this newsletter. I don't think that's a good enough balance, right? I think, and I had

00:37:31 ◼   ► a couple people email me and say, "Why would I give you $60 a year for a newsletter?" My

00:37:37 ◼   ► answer is, if all you're doing is paying the money to get the newsletter, it's probably

00:37:42 ◼   ► not a good deal for you. You know, you need to be kind of, this is about supporting me

00:37:48 ◼   ► to write more things on the site that I give away for free that you're not going to get

00:37:51 ◼   ► as a special. You're going to get it like everybody else gets it, but you're going to

00:37:54 ◼   ► one of the people who makes that happen. And as a thank you, there will be some nice things

00:37:59 ◼   ► that we do that nobody else can see that you will get to see. But the primary purpose of

00:38:03 ◼   ► supporting the site is to give us the ability to write more stuff on the site for everybody

00:38:08 ◼   ► to see. And then the bonuses are just a little bit extra because I feel like I didn't want

00:38:14 ◼   ► it to be completely intangible, that all you get is warm fuzzies. I want it to be warm

00:38:18 ◼   ► fuzzies and other stuff too. And so that's what the that is if we do a if we do a like

00:38:24 ◼   ► a membership subscriber only forum at some point that would be a similar thing. If we

00:38:29 ◼   ► offer like discounts or deals or something it'll be a similar thing but those are not

00:38:33 ◼   ► going to be we're not going to gate stuff on the site nor is that the primary objective

00:38:39 ◼   ► of the of the of the membership is it's not to do that and I've I've also heard from people

00:38:44 ◼   ► that who have asked, I mean, you get a lot of questions like this, like, "Why can't

00:38:50 ◼   ► you charge me less? I don't want to give you $6 a month, but I would give you $2 a

00:38:55 ◼   ► month." And my answer is, "I'm asking for $6 a month. That's a decision I made."

00:38:59 ◼   ► And you know, that's the threshold. And if you don't feel strongly enough about this

00:39:03 ◼   ► to hit the threshold, that's fine. The site's still going to be there. But that's the

00:39:08 ◼   ► number that I decided to set, and $60 a year. Also, the site's called Six Colors, so there

00:39:13 ◼   ► we're going to be sixes in the prices. That's how it is.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Personal brand, right?

00:39:17 ◼   ► I guess. I don't have a specific affinity for the number six, and I'm colorblind. And

00:39:23 ◼   ► yet here we are.

00:39:24 ◼   ► What are you going to do? You're stuck in it now, Jason. You had a good idea for a name

00:39:28 ◼   ► and now it controls everything. That's how these things go.

00:39:30 ◼   ► The domain was available.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Yep.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:39:34 ◼   ► The pricing is, you say, $6 a month, $60 a year. So basically you get two months free

00:39:37 ◼   ► if you sign up for a year. How have you felt about the reaction so far, the response? Has

00:39:43 ◼   ► it been good? Have you been happy with it?

00:39:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the response has been fantastic. It's been very supportive. It's not too surprising

00:39:51 ◼   ► in the sense that one of the reasons that this actually happened is because I heard

00:39:55 ◼   ► from so many people who said, "I want to support what you're doing." And right now there's

00:40:00 ◼   ► no way to support what you're doing. And we're living in this world where Kickstarter exists

00:40:04 ◼   ► and Patreon exists, and I had sponsors on the site, but no direct means of support for

00:40:12 ◼   ► readers. And to get back to the subscriber thing, a lot of the people discovered me from

00:40:17 ◼   ► a place where there was a subscription relationship, right? It's like, there was a way when you

00:40:23 ◼   ► read Macworld, you felt like if you were reading the magazine, you paid for it. And so there

00:40:29 ◼   ► was that connection there, and you had ads in it too, but you were a participant in that

00:40:33 ◼   ► process. And I learned a lot when I was at IDG about the fact that, especially in harder

00:40:38 ◼   ► times when things like sponsorship advertising revenue can drain away, it really is helpful

00:40:43 ◼   ► that you've got people who read your stuff and are willing to give you money for it because

00:40:48 ◼   ► that is another way you can weather a storm. And a lot of the executives at IDG come from

00:40:54 ◼   ► the sales side. Almost all of them originate as being ad salespeople. And it's interesting

00:40:59 ◼   ► to see, you know, in good times the business decisions are all made sort of with the audience

00:41:06 ◼   ► as a secondary thought. I'll put it nicely, like it's all about the customer or the advertisers,

00:41:13 ◼   ► not the readers. The readers are your product basically, they're the audience, but your

00:41:17 ◼   ► customers are the advertisers. And it's funny, being through a couple of economic downturns,

00:41:23 ◼   ► the great recession and also the dot-com bubble burst. It's amazing how quickly those attitudes

00:41:29 ◼   ► change among the business people when the advertisers all kind of disappear. And suddenly,

00:41:36 ◼   ► at IDG anyway, having that subscriber base became incredibly powerful, like, "Oh, I didn't

00:41:42 ◼   ► realize that people were giving us money." Yes, people, they are your customer too. And

00:41:48 ◼   ► And so I've never forgotten that. And I like, as I'm setting out on my own here, between

00:41:56 ◼   ► the feedback that I got from people and trying to have a diverse set of places where I make

00:42:02 ◼   ► money, that seemed like a good idea to me. The idea that if I can't sell sponsors on

00:42:08 ◼   ► the site, that the site still has a way that it's supporting me. And quite honestly, you

00:42:12 ◼   ► know, if I had three or four weeks where, which hasn't happened, but if I had three

00:42:16 ◼   ► or four weeks where there were no sponsors on the site before, essentially I'm doing

00:42:19 ◼   ► Six Colors completely for free at that point, because there was no other means of support.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And I know some of this is just psychological, but now I feel like even if I have no sponsors

00:42:28 ◼   ► on the site, the site is still operating because I have subscribers. It doesn't matter that

00:42:34 ◼   ► I don't have sponsors some weeks, which I've been very fortunate. I have had very few open

00:42:39 ◼   ► weeks -- shocking compared to what I expected, actually, when I started -- of sponsors not

00:42:44 ◼   ► being on the site, but you get my point that if they were to vanish, I would still have

00:42:49 ◼   ► a reason to do the site because the readers are also supporting the site and that makes

00:42:54 ◼   ► me feel good. So people have been positive. It's unsurprising given like it was one of

00:43:00 ◼   ► my motivators for doing it, that people have been very supportive, very positive. And like

00:43:05 ◼   ► I said, I think I've received two emails from people saying, "I don't think I'm going to

00:43:09 ◼   ► pay you," which...

00:43:10 ◼   ► I think that's a pretty good ratio to be honest, Jason.

00:43:12 ◼   ► It's somewhat surprising because the internet

00:43:15 ◼   ► is full of people who want to tell you things

00:43:17 ◼   ► that they don't need to tell you.

00:43:19 ◼   ► That they can just-- it's fine.

00:43:20 ◼   ► It's like, seriously, it's fine if you

00:43:22 ◼   ► disagree with what I write.

00:43:23 ◼   ► It's fine if you don't think that what I do is valuable.

00:43:28 ◼   ► That's actually-- it's fine.

00:43:29 ◼   ► The site's also not going anywhere.

00:43:30 ◼   ► It's free for you anyway.

00:43:32 ◼   ► But sometimes people have this behavior on the internet.

00:43:34 ◼   ► It's like, well, no, I'm going to tell you

00:43:35 ◼   ► that I'm unfollowing you on Twitter.

00:43:37 ◼   ► It's like, why?

00:43:38 ◼   ► Why do that?

00:43:38 ◼   ► I'm going to tell you that I don't think it's worth it.

00:43:40 ◼   ► So I had two people who wrote in and said,

00:43:42 ◼   ► I don't think it's worth it." And I wrote back very politely and I said, "Well, sort

00:43:46 ◼   ► of what I just said to you, which is the site's still going to be there. These are the prices.

00:43:50 ◼   ► If you feel like supporting me, you know, you're not just doing it for the newsletter.

00:43:53 ◼   ► This isn't like Stratechery where Ben Thompson writes an amazing newsletter five days a week

00:43:59 ◼   ► and only one of those gets posted online. It's not the same kind of balance. This is

00:44:02 ◼   ► more about supporting the public site and also getting some bonuses. And if you don't

00:44:08 ◼   ► feel comfortable with the way that it works, that's fine, the site's still there, please

00:44:12 ◼   ► read it and thanks for reading it." So I wrote back to both of those people with that and

00:44:17 ◼   ► one of them wrote me back and said they subscribed. And seriously, that's where I am. It's weird,

00:44:23 ◼   ► this is a funny world that we live in with patronage, with Patreons and Kickstarters

00:44:28 ◼   ► and things like that. But I would say overall it's been positive and I'd say that my initial

00:44:34 ◼   ► account of members is pretty much what I hoped it would be. I think it's something to build

00:44:41 ◼   ► on. I would like over time to continue to grow the number of members and not feel like

00:44:45 ◼   ► -- if you told me that in six months my membership number would be what it is today, more or

00:44:50 ◼   ► less, I would be disappointed, but I'm very happy with where it is right now as a starting

00:44:56 ◼   ► point.

00:44:57 ◼   ► So it's where you want it to be now, obviously not where you want it to be going forward,

00:45:01 ◼   ► that's kind of accepted because it should go up over time.

00:45:07 ◼   ► You would hope, I mean, you would hope that I would build subscribers and not lose them.

00:45:12 ◼   ► That's always a bad sign.

00:45:13 ◼   ► But in the end, if you back up and look at the bigger picture here, I now have two ways

00:45:21 ◼   ► that I make money from Six Colors.

00:45:22 ◼   ► That allows me to have Six Colors be more prioritized, more part of my job.

00:45:26 ◼   ► It allows me to say no to some of the freelance assignments that I've taken.

00:45:30 ◼   ► I didn't plan when I quit my job to be a freelancer, I planned to do podcasting on Six Colors,

00:45:35 ◼   ► but I had freelance work offered to me and so I took it, but it takes up time that could

00:45:42 ◼   ► go to Six Colors. So one of the things that this does in addition to diversifying my income

00:45:47 ◼   ► is it allows me to turn away from some work that is not the work that I want to do, which

00:45:54 ◼   ► is the work on Six Colors. So it's good. It's been great. It's been a great experience.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And I could not stop doing everything else I do and just do Six Colors, and the addition

00:46:07 ◼   ► of the membership revenue doesn't really change that. But when I was talking to John Gruber

00:46:12 ◼   ► over the weekend on the talk show, I said to him, I think it's a very similar story

00:46:17 ◼   ► to the story that he has, which is, I would like it if my job was do the podcast that

00:46:21 ◼   ► I do and do six colors. I would like it if that was my entire job and I think that would

00:46:25 ◼   ► be great. And right now it's not. I also scramble around and do some freelance stuff too. And

00:46:31 ◼   ► some of that freelance work is great. I mean it's fun writing at Macworld every week. I

00:46:34 ◼   ► am writing there way more than I ever used to and they pay me and that's also nice. But

00:46:39 ◼   ► I also pick up lots of other assignments that are like, "Eh, you know, it's an assignment."

00:46:44 ◼   ► I'm not going to denigrate them on the air, right? But some of them are more mercenary

00:46:49 ◼   ► than others and I would really rather not do those and pour that effort into Six Colors

00:46:54 ◼   ► stuff.

00:46:55 ◼   ► So people should go and sign up, where can they sign up?

00:46:57 ◼   ► You go to sixcolors.com/subscribe or if you just go to sixcolors.com there's a big link

00:47:04 ◼   ► at the top of the page that is become a subscriber that would also get you there.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And it's as we said six dollars a month or sixty dollars a year.

00:47:12 ◼   ► We're using Memberfull which is the same system that Federico uses for Max Stories and that

00:47:17 ◼   ► that Ben Thompson uses for Stratechery. It uses Stripe for payments, so it's a credit

00:47:21 ◼   ► card payment. You can't use PayPal. I wish there were a way for people to use PayPal,

00:47:27 ◼   ► but that's just not how Memberful is set up. And yeah, if you like what I write at Six

00:47:34 ◼   ► Colors and want to support me, that would be the best way to do it.

00:47:39 ◼   ► >> L

00:47:39 ◼   ► listeners who were hanging around on the livestream last week, Jason, they found out a very exciting

00:47:45 ◼   ► little easter egg which has occurred. Who is subscriber number one?

00:47:50 ◼   ► Who is subscriber number one? Is it you? It is me. Do you remember? Last week? 001, that's

00:47:55 ◼   ► my number. I'm the subscriber number one. That was a lot of subscribers ago now, Myke.

00:47:58 ◼   ► I mean, you're just one of the pack now. One of the many now. One of the horde. Yeah, I

00:48:03 ◼   ► have to go way back and review older orders scroll to get back to you but but I appreciate

00:48:09 ◼   ► that you were well I turned it on right it was the test uh-huh and I finally turned it

00:48:14 ◼   ► on and said hey it's turned on and he went okay I got right in there mr. m hurley there

00:48:19 ◼   ► it is ordered member number one Joe Steele your member number four there was one was

00:48:27 ◼   ► it all good about this little stuff one very quick thing I want to mention we sell t-shirts

00:48:30 ◼   ► at Relay FM, lovely Relay FM t-shirts. We're currently doing a 40% off sale for the holidays.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes. You want to use the coupon code "allthegreatshirts"

00:48:39 ◼   ► at the Relay FM store and you'll get 40% off. We have men and women's shirts in a bunch

00:48:43 ◼   ► of different sizes. I think we want to do a new design next year, so we're doing a little

00:48:49 ◼   ► bit of a sale for 2015 to kind of get rid of some of that stock. So go in there, all

00:48:53 ◼   ► the great shirts, you get 40% off.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And we should say there is a plan, there is a plan, early in the new year for an awesome

00:49:02 ◼   ► upgrade item.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Piece of apparel.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Seriously this is just the best.

00:49:09 ◼   ► So next year.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Let me just take our second break for this week and thank our good friends over at Smile

00:49:15 ◼   ► and today I want to talk to you about TextExpander.

00:49:17 ◼   ► If you ever type the same sentences, phrases or words on a regular basis over and over

00:49:22 ◼   ► again then you need TextExpander in your life.

00:49:24 ◼   ► TextExpander will be able to save you time and effort by expanding your short abbreviations

00:49:30 ◼   ► into frequently used text, even pictures if you want to.

00:49:33 ◼   ► TextExpander is an app that will improve your communication.

00:49:36 ◼   ► So let's say for example you are somebody who you send a lot of emails and a lot of

00:49:40 ◼   ► the emails that you send have very similar text in or you know you send some support

00:49:45 ◼   ► email or maybe you send out maybe you work in HR team and you send out an email which

00:49:49 ◼   ► asks people for references or maybe you do what I do right like I send a bunch of emails

00:49:53 ◼   ► to sponsors and I send in information for payment stuff and things like that.

00:49:59 ◼   ► It is really, really easy with TextExpander to make all of this stuff consistent and quick.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So you can type in a regular response and you can have little dropdown fields so you

00:50:07 ◼   ► can personalize them, which I do.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And what it will do is it just gives you a way to, one, make your communication more

00:50:13 ◼   ► consistent.

00:50:14 ◼   ► So you're sending the exact same thing to different people, which is like tweaks if

00:50:17 ◼   ► you want it.

00:50:18 ◼   ► But it also allows you to save time because you're not sitting there and writing that

00:50:21 ◼   ► stuff out all the time.

00:50:22 ◼   ► Like you know, like at the end of the week I send some stuff out to our sponsors to confirm

00:50:25 ◼   ► some stuff and I use TextExpander to help me get through that, those pile of emails

00:50:30 ◼   ► super quickly because otherwise I'll be sitting there for ages and I love TextExpander for

00:50:34 ◼   ► that sort of stuff.

00:50:36 ◼   ► TextExpander has a new look and feel now with TextExpander 5 and it can help you type even

00:50:40 ◼   ► faster than ever before because now TextExpander will make suggestions of frequently typed

00:50:45 ◼   ► phrases to abbreviate and save time for you.

00:50:47 ◼   ► I also use TextExpander for common errors that I make.

00:50:51 ◼   ► So if I make a spelling mistake frequently or if I don't capitalise something correctly,

00:50:56 ◼   ► like some brands will use like CamelCase and things like that in their words, I throw those

00:51:01 ◼   ► into TextExpander so I just never get them wrong because TextExpander corrects them for

00:51:05 ◼   ► me.

00:51:06 ◼   ► You can also sync them amongst multiple devices using iCloud Drive or Dropbox and they're

00:51:10 ◼   ► available in a bunch of different apps or via the iOS custom keyboard that comes with

00:51:14 ◼   ► TextExpander for iOS allowing you to use your snippets absolutely anywhere whether an app

00:51:19 ◼   ► supports TextExpander snippets or not. TextExpander 5 costs $44.95 US and upgrades are available

00:51:26 ◼   ► for $19.95 for existing users. It's also free to those who purchased on or after January

00:51:32 ◼   ► 1st 2015. You can find out more about TextExpander 5 by visiting smilesoftware.com/upgrade.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Smile and Texas Band of Five

00:51:45 ◼   ► for sponsoring this week's episode.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Please note that Texas Band of Five requires Yosemite

00:51:49 ◼   ► and is ready for El Capitan.

00:51:51 ◼   ► So Mr. Jason Snell, today just before the show

00:51:56 ◼   ► you published your iPad Pro review.

00:51:59 ◼   ► - I did, I did.

00:52:00 ◼   ► You published something too.

00:52:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of mentioned it

00:52:04 ◼   ► in the pencil part. - We did.

00:52:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I also today did my Apple Pencil review

00:52:08 ◼   ► on the pen addict, which is also in the show notes

00:52:10 ◼   ► if people wanna read that.

00:52:11 ◼   ► I didn't write as many words as you did though, you know?

00:52:14 ◼   ► - I have to say I'm disappointed your review

00:52:16 ◼   ► was actually typed on, in like in text in a webpage

00:52:19 ◼   ► when I really expected that it would just be a series

00:52:22 ◼   ► of JPEGs of you writing it by hand.

00:52:25 ◼   ► - There is one section in the review

00:52:27 ◼   ► which is also handwritten.

00:52:29 ◼   ► So you can see the images in there.

00:52:30 ◼   ► But yeah, my handwriting isn't good enough

00:52:32 ◼   ► that people would be happy to just read it.

00:52:35 ◼   ► It would have been very upsetting

00:52:36 ◼   ► for everybody involved I think.

00:52:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, your handwriting is not, for a pen addict,

00:52:41 ◼   ► handwriting is not as good as I would expect. But mine, it's better than mine still. But still.

00:52:48 ◼   ► - Hey, I don't think your handwriting has to be great to enjoy pens.

00:52:52 ◼   ► - You know, OneNote was able to properly OCR my handwriting, even though my handwriting is terrible.

00:52:58 ◼   ► But I found out that what it does is it just makes some really, it indexes, it indexes every

00:53:04 ◼   ► possibility for a given word. So you know what you actually wrote. It doesn't know what you actually

00:53:10 ◼   ► I wrote but it could have been one of these four things and if you search for any of them

00:53:13 ◼   ► It will find it because it doesn't actually know but it's kind of magical to use

00:53:18 ◼   ► These one notes automatic search thing where I I wrote a whole page full of notes

00:53:22 ◼   ► And then I searched for a word on it and it came up with it. It's pretty cool. Yeah

00:53:25 ◼   ► So, okay. So yes iPad Pro review I wrote it

00:53:28 ◼   ► Let's get your overall feeling then you spent a bit more time with it than what we spoken about on the show

00:53:34 ◼   ► How are you feeling about the iPad Pro?

00:53:37 ◼   ► Maybe also in compared to the Mac because I really like the title of your piece isn't no country for old Macs

00:53:43 ◼   ► Which is such is very very smart. I like that a lot

00:53:46 ◼   ► So explain a little bit to people about what your kind of thought process is here

00:53:50 ◼   ► Well, it's a lot of it kind of came out when I wrote that piece

00:53:54 ◼   ► last week I wrote a piece about

00:53:57 ◼   ► About who the who the iPad Pro is for and

00:54:04 ◼   ► And that one was new tricks for old dogs, which I've been writing a lot of wacky headlines.

00:54:10 ◼   ► But the idea that the days of us saying the iPad and iOS can't be used for real work are

00:54:17 ◼   ► over, it is undoubtedly capable of using it for real work. And if you stop me and say,

00:54:22 ◼   ► but in my industry, I need this, like, yes, yes, of course, there are gonna be things

00:54:27 ◼   ► in certain industries that just can't be done. But I think for a huge amount of work, it

00:54:32 ◼   ► be done, you can use this. The challenge is, do you want to? And that's sort of the conclusion

00:54:37 ◼   ► of the piece, is, you know, this is an unapologetic iPad. It is not--I did a whole section that

00:54:45 ◼   ► I actually wrote in the intro, planning to write, and then wrote the whole thing and

00:54:47 ◼   ► forgot to write, and I had to insert it last yesterday afternoon when I was finishing this,

00:54:53 ◼   ► about the Surface, because everybody talks about the Surface, and, "Oh, this is like

00:54:58 ◼   ► the Surface because it's got the keyboard and all of that." But I actually think that

00:55:01 ◼   ► this is a startling contrast with the Surface because the Surface is the ultimate compromise.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Surface is all about what Microsoft is about, which is Windows, and people who use Windows

00:55:14 ◼   ► and people who use PCs. And so the Surface is a PC that is also a tablet. It is not the

00:55:19 ◼   ► best PC. It is not the best tablet. It is the best thing that's a tablet and a PC, probably.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And Apple has been very clear that this is not how they want to make products. They want

00:55:33 ◼   ► to make a Mac that's the best Mac and an iPad that's the best iPad and not a toaster fridge,

00:55:38 ◼   ► right? Not something that's in between. And Surface is in between. So I think all of that

00:55:42 ◼   ► is true and I think it speaks to what those companies are about. Apple has no reason to

00:55:47 ◼   ► do that. Mac sales are great, the iPhone is huge. And if you take the big picture, look

00:55:54 ◼   ► out five years or ten years, do we really think we're gonna have like combination devices

00:55:59 ◼   ► that are both a classic PC and something else? I don't think so. I think this is all about

00:56:03 ◼   ► transitions about how there are gonna be people who are comfortable using a computer and there

00:56:08 ◼   ► are people who are comfortable using touchscreen mobile devices and you want to provide tools

00:56:13 ◼   ► for both of them. So I think the question for me is could the iPad, could Apple make

00:56:20 ◼   ► an iPad that's also a Mac and you know it looks like a MacBook and then you pop the

00:56:25 ◼   ► screen off and it's an iPad. It absolutely could. It would definitely feel like a toaster

00:56:31 ◼   ► fridge. Would I want one? Possibly. But would that be a better product or would that be

00:56:37 ◼   ► some kind of a Frankenstein product that is a hugely weird awkward compromise for a time

00:56:47 ◼   ► of compromise. Yeah, I mean that's what it would be, because we are in times of compromise,

00:56:51 ◼   ► we're in times of transition, it would be a transitional product. But the bottom line

00:56:56 ◼   ► is that's not the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro, and this is where the title comes from, there's

00:57:02 ◼   ► a line in the piece that is "The iPad Pro does not exist to give comfort to Mac users."

00:57:06 ◼   ► not what it's for. And, you know, I, having used the Mac for 26 years now, am a Mac user,

00:57:17 ◼   ► and it is not comfortable using iOS for me, although I'm getting better at it. And, you

00:57:23 ◼   ► know, I think that that's one of the problems with evaluating the device, is that it's a

00:57:28 ◼   ► pretty great device for what it is. I don't think the smart keyboard is a great buy for

00:57:34 ◼   ► for most people because I think you'd be better off just giving a Bluetooth keyboard unless

00:57:37 ◼   ► you absolutely need to have a keyboard that you can carry around with you at all times

00:57:41 ◼   ► on the device as a cover. That is a very specific use case, but beyond that I think it's actually

00:57:48 ◼   ► too expensive and not as good as just buying a Bluetooth keyboard and having like a regular

00:57:52 ◼   ► cover that you can use as a stand. But in general, I mean, I can't just say thumbs up

00:57:58 ◼   ► thumbs down on the iPad Pro because I think that's the bottom line is do you want to work

00:58:02 ◼   ► on the iPad Pro? Do you wanna work on iOS? You can. Do you want to? Do you wanna make

00:58:07 ◼   ► the switch? If you're somebody who's like a casual user, somebody who doesn't have a

00:58:13 ◼   ► million different workflows and scripts and things like that, if you're somebody who does

00:58:18 ◼   ► what I said to Gruber was, you know, it's office work, like capital O office work, Microsoft

00:58:23 ◼   ► office work, you could do that on the iPad Pro. And it's pretty great actually. So for

00:58:28 ◼   ► a lot of people, you could, you know, you get the benefits of portability, of ultra-portability

00:58:34 ◼   ► here, even more than a laptop, and of convertibility, in that you can pop the keyboard off and you've

00:58:41 ◼   ► got a tablet, but you, you know, that's the trade-off, is you're out of your Mac metaphor

00:58:48 ◼   ► and you're on your iOS metaphor, and that's just what it is.

00:58:51 ◼   ► >> CHESNEY There's a couple of pieces in here that I wanted to pick out.

00:58:55 ◼   ► >> MARTIN Yup.

00:58:56 ◼   ► a couple of quotes that I like and then we can discuss them so I'm gonna be quoting you here.

00:59:00 ◼   ► So the first one is "You get used to the size fast. After a week using the iPad Pro,

00:59:05 ◼   ► I dropped my iPad Air 2 down onto my trusty old origami workstation and just started to laugh.

00:59:10 ◼   ► It's like a tiny baby iPad. On a tabletop or other workspace, the size of the iPad Pro's screen

00:59:16 ◼   ► really shines." This to me is just like what it was like when I switched to the 6 Plus.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Yeah. So you get used to the size and then it's like this is

00:59:31 ◼   ► normal. I mean and I have an iPad Air 2 here as well with me sitting on the desk

00:59:36 ◼   ► and it's like a mini and Edina uses a mini and I think that thing is

00:59:40 ◼   ► hilarious when I see it now. I know right? It's like why do you even

00:59:45 ◼   ► exist mini? You're so small. It puts it in perspective.

00:59:52 ◼   ► it's yeah it is there's there's got to be some law that has is named after somebody that's the law

00:59:59 ◼   ► of the large it's the law of large displays that the larger a display you get the more

01:00:04 ◼   ► unacceptable like i used an 11-inch macbook air as my main computer for so long and i've used the

01:00:10 ◼   ► 27-inch imac for a year and now and people are always asking don't doesn't the 11-inch air feel

01:00:15 ◼   ► cramped? No, it's fine, it's great. Now it feels cramped because I'm used to the bigger

01:00:22 ◼   ► screen and the iPad is kind of like that. I mean, I really expected that when I dropped

01:00:27 ◼   ► the iPad Air down on the origami workstation that I'd be like, "Oh yeah, see, this is fine

01:00:30 ◼   ► with the software keyboard slid away. This is totally fine." And it's fine, but I also

01:00:36 ◼   ► laughed and went, "Oh, look at you, you little baby iPad," because it is dramatically smaller

01:00:43 ◼   ► than the Pro. It is a huge difference.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And I mean, I love the size of the iPad Pro and I know that you know, you talk about in

01:00:55 ◼   ► the review the places where you use it and kind of saying that in bed for you and that

01:00:59 ◼   ► kind of stuff it doesn't work but for me it does. I'm very happy with it. It's obviously

01:01:04 ◼   ► not the easiest. I mean if you're going to talk about what's the best iPad to use from

01:01:08 ◼   ► a comfortable perspective when you're laying in bed, it's always the mini because the mini

01:01:11 ◼   ► you could throw anything around, there's nothing to it. But you know a lot of

01:01:15 ◼   ► devices like you have to accept some kinds of trade-offs and for me it's like

01:01:19 ◼   ► yeah the iPad Pro maybe isn't as comfortable when I'm sitting in bed but

01:01:23 ◼   ► I love it everywhere like it's fantastic for me it just really really works it's

01:01:27 ◼   ► like yeah okay maybe it's a little bit less comfortable to hold maybe I have to

01:01:30 ◼   ► somehow change the way that I'm sitting or laying when I'm looking at this

01:01:34 ◼   ► device but it really works for me and I really love it for that. It's like

01:01:38 ◼   ► carrying a clipboard and you gotta be kind of accepting that it's like carrying a clipboard

01:01:43 ◼   ► and when I wake up in the morning and I'm checking Twitter while I'm kind of basically

01:01:47 ◼   ► laying down it's not the best. It's not the best ergonomics for me. Sitting up, I don't

01:01:53 ◼   ► have a problem with it. Standing up or at a desk or something it works great but in

01:01:59 ◼   ► that more reclined kind of position it doesn't, you know, it's not my favorite.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I mean, I get that. I totally get why you would feel that way about it. I understand

01:02:10 ◼   ► why many people would, but it works well enough for me that I'm happy with it. One thing that

01:02:15 ◼   ► I'm not happy about, which I'll have a quote from your review, fuzzy graphics and a keyboard

01:02:20 ◼   ► that's hard to type on. This is one of the worst parts about the upscale app problem

01:02:25 ◼   ► that we have on the Pro.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. There's just a lot of apps that haven't been updated for it yet. And I'm a

01:02:31 ◼   ► a little surprised, but this happened with—I launched an app on my iPhone the other day

01:02:36 ◼   ► that is still upscaled, the iPhone 5, and that's not good. And we still have some, and

01:02:43 ◼   ► it is frustrating, and those all need to get updated, because that is one of the problems

01:02:48 ◼   ► that we have with the—you get the weird software keyboard that's the upscaled software

01:02:54 ◼   ► keyboard, so now you've got two different software keyboards depending on the context,

01:02:57 ◼   ► is something that iPhone users know from the transition to the 6 and the 6 Plus, where

01:03:01 ◼   ► you would get—some apps would open, and you're like, "Why is this keyboard different?"

01:03:05 ◼   ► And the answer is, "Because it's an upscaled iPhone 5 keyboard." And now that is happening

01:03:09 ◼   ► on the Pro, there are upscaled apps from the iPad that—and it's no good. And everything's

01:03:15 ◼   ► a little bit fuzzy. And there are a lot of apps that are like that, and it's just—it'll

01:03:21 ◼   ► get better over time, but right now it is a problem.

01:03:24 ◼   ► - I also like this part where you're comparing the iPads.

01:03:27 ◼   ► What's more, the iPad Pro doesn't need to be

01:03:29 ◼   ► for a broad category of users.

01:03:31 ◼   ► It's not the iPad just one of three different models,

01:03:34 ◼   ► each with different characteristics.

01:03:36 ◼   ► For most people, the iPad Air 2 is probably the best choice,

01:03:39 ◼   ► but that's not a knock on the iPad Pro.

01:03:41 ◼   ► It costs more and gives you more,

01:03:42 ◼   ► and if you want more, it's the one for you.

01:03:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is, maybe this is my pet theory,

01:03:48 ◼   ► but I feel like the burden is off of a lot of Apple products

01:03:52 ◼   ► once they're part of a family,

01:03:53 ◼   ► And I really felt this when the iPad mini

01:03:57 ◼   ► didn't have to be the iPad.

01:03:59 ◼   ► It was the iPad mini.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It was like another iPad.

01:04:03 ◼   ► And the iPhone 6 Plus doesn't need to be the iPhone.

01:04:07 ◼   ► It needs to be an option for iPhone buyers

01:04:10 ◼   ► because there's also the iPhone 6

01:04:11 ◼   ► and the older models that are also out there.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And if they added a smaller iPhone,

01:04:16 ◼   ► an updated version of the smaller size,

01:04:17 ◼   ► it would be the same deal.

01:04:18 ◼   ► It would be an iPhone that you can get.

01:04:20 ◼   ► And I think that it used to be the iPhone

01:04:23 ◼   ► and the iPad, and there's a whole lot more burden, I think, on that product, because

01:04:26 ◼   ► it needs to serve everybody that Apple's trying to reach in that market. And the iPad Pro

01:04:30 ◼   ► doesn't need to do that. The iPad Pro is unabashedly a big iPad, and if you don't want it, it's

01:04:35 ◼   ► not like there isn't another iPad for you to buy. And I think that's a good place for

01:04:40 ◼   ► Apple to be, and I think it's a good place for a product to be. That's one of the things

01:04:43 ◼   ► I loved about the first iPad mini, is that it was allowed to be itself, and it didn't

01:04:50 ◼   ► have to feel the burden and be compromised in a lot of ways so that

01:04:53 ◼   ► everybody would want it because it wasn't made for everybody.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And then this was your kind of conclusion and you mentioned this a little bit but I want to read this

01:05:02 ◼   ► part and then talk another part about this Frankenstein product and that's why

01:05:07 ◼   ► I can't help but ask myself if Apple made a retina MacBook whose screen

01:05:12 ◼   ► popped off and became an iPad would I buy it? It seems like such a Frankenstein

01:05:15 ◼   ► product so inelegant a concept and so clearly not the way the world is going

01:05:19 ◼   ► And yet I would be tempted, not because it's a bold direction forward, but because it's

01:05:23 ◼   ► a compromise that grants me some comfort in a time of change.

01:05:27 ◼   ► The iPad Pro does not exist to give comfort to Mac users."

01:05:31 ◼   ► This combined with that piece that you mentioned that you wrote last week, I get a feeling

01:05:37 ◼   ► of nervousness from you that the computing landscape is changing underneath you and there's

01:05:43 ◼   ► kind of nothing you can do about it whether you like it or not.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it that way.

01:05:49 ◼   ► It is interesting because Gruber's review ends with a similar statement of like, it's

01:05:53 ◼   ► not for me, but I am open to the possibility that I'm a dinosaur, right? Which is something

01:05:59 ◼   ► I say in the new tricks for old dogs, right?

01:06:01 ◼   ► - Steven also wrote a thing on 512, effectively the same kind of idea, where you all sound

01:06:07 ◼   ► really scared.

01:06:10 ◼   ► - That's not it. I think it's being, I think you need to be able to identify in yourself

01:06:17 ◼   ► your own biases and lay them out there and be able to think beyond them. And I suspect,

01:06:23 ◼   ► and I think that Steven and John writing similar things also suspect this, I suspect that a

01:06:32 ◼   ► lot of the people whose reaction to something like the iPad Pro is, "It's stupid, it's not

01:06:37 ◼   ► a computer, you can't use it to get real work done, why are they bothering? It's a waste

01:06:41 ◼   ► of time, I suspect that those are people who just don't want to accept that for some people,

01:06:52 ◼   ► the touchscreen computing metaphor is what computers are going to be.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And that they may have, they may, the thing that they think of as how you interact with

01:07:03 ◼   ► computers is now very clearly part of an era and eras have ends and they aren't finite

01:07:11 ◼   ► like they aren't sharp ends, they're trail off ends,

01:07:15 ◼   ► but it happens just like it happened with going

01:07:18 ◼   ► from command lines to GUIs, it happens.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And so I think step one is acknowledging that it's true,

01:07:26 ◼   ► right, acknowledging that this is a thing that's happening.

01:07:29 ◼   ► And I have no fear about it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► This is about acknowledging the reality of it.

01:07:36 ◼   ► So step one is saying you can work on iOS.

01:07:40 ◼   ► and that the reasons that you won't work on iOS

01:07:43 ◼   ► are more to do with you and your preferences.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And again, that's not judgmental,

01:07:48 ◼   ► more to do with how you want to work

01:07:50 ◼   ► than it is about the device.

01:07:53 ◼   ► And I think that's important,

01:07:54 ◼   ► especially if you're somebody who writes about technology,

01:07:57 ◼   ► I think you need to be able to say that

01:07:59 ◼   ► and understand that.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Now, step two is also being flexible enough

01:08:03 ◼   ► to try and change and see what it's like.

01:08:07 ◼   ► And it may not all work for you,

01:08:08 ◼   ► but being able to make those judgments

01:08:11 ◼   ► and see what it's like gives you the flexibility

01:08:14 ◼   ► to communicate that to other people.

01:08:16 ◼   ► So that, I think that's the next step, but part,

01:08:18 ◼   ► but to get there,

01:08:19 ◼   ► I have to make the acknowledgement within myself

01:08:21 ◼   ► that I have a bias here,

01:08:23 ◼   ► which is that I've been using computers like the Mac.

01:08:26 ◼   ► I've been using the Mac for 26 years.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And of course, it's gonna be hard to switch

01:08:31 ◼   ► to something like iOS for productivity stuff

01:08:34 ◼   ► that I think of as computery stuff.

01:08:36 ◼   ► So step one is to say it is,

01:08:38 ◼   ► and then you can decide whether you wanna make that effort

01:08:40 ◼   ► or not.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I don't wanna make that effort to permanently switch

01:08:44 ◼   ► because I don't see the need to do that

01:08:47 ◼   ► as anything other than a stunt,

01:08:48 ◼   ► but to be able to mode switch,

01:08:50 ◼   ► to be able to not have to carry around a MacBook Air

01:08:53 ◼   ► when I wanna do work elsewhere,

01:08:55 ◼   ► but just carry around an iPad, that I see benefits in.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So, and I feel like the platform is robust enough

01:09:01 ◼   ► that you can do it, even if I don't have the iPad Pro,

01:09:04 ◼   ► even I have the Air 2 and an external keyboard.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But yeah, I think it's fair,

01:09:10 ◼   ► and I mentioned this earlier

01:09:12 ◼   ► when I picked up my review unit at Apple

01:09:13 ◼   ► and got my briefing,

01:09:15 ◼   ► one of the things that they said in the briefing,

01:09:16 ◼   ► and it's all kind of backgroundy,

01:09:18 ◼   ► so I'm not gonna quote them directly,

01:09:19 ◼   ► but I got this vibe from them about the keyboard,

01:09:23 ◼   ► the smart keyboard,

01:09:24 ◼   ► that it was almost a legacy product.

01:09:27 ◼   ► And that was a moment where I thought,

01:09:28 ◼   ► oh, huh, interesting.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Like, is a hardware keyboard a legacy technology?

01:09:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:37 ◼   ► That's crazy to me.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And yet I think it's worth thinking about that.

01:09:42 ◼   ► And considering is a hardware keyboard

01:09:45 ◼   ► and is a mouse cursor tracking across a screen

01:09:50 ◼   ► an old metaphor that is being supplanted.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And if it is, what's new and how does the new stuff work?

01:09:57 ◼   ► Because the work, you know,

01:09:58 ◼   ► people are still gonna need to get their jobs done.

01:10:00 ◼   ► It's just, you know, the tools that are,

01:10:03 ◼   ► the tools of choice for some people have changed.

01:10:05 ◼   ► I don't know, but that's where it comes for me. There's no fear or concern, and change

01:10:14 ◼   ► doesn't particularly bother me. I think you need to call it what it is and not pretend

01:10:21 ◼   ► that it's not an aspect of anything that somebody who's been writing about computers for a long

01:10:26 ◼   ► time, you know, it's part of their frame of reference. And the iPad Pro doesn't care,

01:10:32 ◼   ► right? That's the last line there. The iPad Pro doesn't care. It is not like the surface.

01:10:37 ◼   ► The surface is meant to make PC users feel better about having a tablet. The iPad Pro

01:10:41 ◼   ► doesn't care.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Yeah, so screw you buddy, this is my time.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Like I look at all of this and I feel like it's safe to say now that the personal computer's

01:10:50 ◼   ► time has peaked and it's changing.

01:10:54 ◼   ► Well look at the, I mean, take the tablet out of the equation for a minute and look

01:11:00 ◼   ► at smartphone numbers and computer numbers, PC numbers. It already peaked. It's been off

01:11:09 ◼   ► the peak for a while now. The PC market shrinks and the smartphone market is insanely growing.

01:11:15 ◼   ► So you know, and we can, the tablet is a tweener and it's interesting, but it's already happened.

01:11:23 ◼   ► People interact with the internet and use technology to do what we consider computer

01:11:26 ◼   ► things with smartphones and other devices too, but with smartphones. That is the computer

01:11:33 ◼   ► now. And presumably all future or many future computing device innovations are going to

01:11:41 ◼   ► be keying off the smartphone because it's the metaphor now in a way that Windows, you

01:11:49 ◼   ► know, that the Mac led to Windows 95 and the suddenly that GUI Mac style GUI was everywhere.

01:11:55 ◼   ► that was the metaphor. The smartphone is the metaphor now and the iPad is a

01:11:59 ◼   ► computer that uses the smartphone metaphor basically. Man, I am very excited

01:12:08 ◼   ► about this product. I wished I could take all of my work to it, right? I can't. I can.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I can do the podcast stuff on it if I want to jump through a lot of hoops but

01:12:16 ◼   ► I'm not ready to do that yet but I see the future of it and I know how happy I

01:12:21 ◼   ► I am using this device for the majority of things.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Like today, I've been working all day today.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I sat down at my iMac just as we were about

01:12:29 ◼   ► to start recording the show, but I've been working all day

01:12:31 ◼   ► and I've been working on my iPad Pro.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Well, like I said, I think people get obsessed

01:12:35 ◼   ► about this idea of switching, like Federico,

01:12:37 ◼   ► 'cause Federico is the switcher, right?

01:12:39 ◼   ► He has switched.

01:12:40 ◼   ► But I think that, you know,

01:12:42 ◼   ► I think that there's context switching.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I think the idea that you might have a computer

01:12:46 ◼   ► that you use, like I stopped,

01:12:48 ◼   ► when I set up this office, I stop working on my Mac laptop in the house. I very rarely

01:12:55 ◼   ► bring my laptop, my MacBook Air, into the house. It basically sits behind me, and I

01:13:00 ◼   ► bring it when I go out somewhere where I need to use the computer or I travel. It gets very

01:13:05 ◼   ► little use now. And that's in contrast to even when I worked at IDG, and I would bring

01:13:11 ◼   ► the laptop home and I would have it and I would do my computery things. Now that I've

01:13:15 ◼   ► I've got the desktop, I've got like, if I wanna do work in the Mac framework, I do it

01:13:19 ◼   ► here at my desk in the office. In the house, it's the iPad or iPhone, but usually the iPad.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And so that's what I start to think about is maybe the iPad is now my thing that I do

01:13:33 ◼   ► everything I'm gonna do productively that is out of the desk where I'm sitting right

01:13:38 ◼   ► now. And if I go to my mom's house in Phoenix to visit her for a few days, I don't bring

01:13:43 ◼   ► a computer, a Mac, I don't bring a MacBook Air, I bring my iPad because I'm out of the

01:13:48 ◼   ► house and that's the hump that I'm getting over is not can I switch entirely to the iPad,

01:13:56 ◼   ► it's just can I use it when I'm away from my Mac and that's a lower bar.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Should we take a break, do some Ask Upgrade? Yeah, let's do it.

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01:16:37 ◼   ► hover.com for their support of this show. So should we do some Ask Upgrade?

01:16:43 ◼   ► Let's do it.

01:16:44 ◼   ► We didn't do any last week so I'm sure that people have been clamoring for the only sound

01:16:50 ◼   ► that could indicate that Ask Upgrade is occurring, Jason.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Well, it would be a sound of lasers, although we got somebody to complain that we should

01:16:58 ◼   ► use the sound of real lasers, to which I would say I think actual laser sound effects would

01:17:03 ◼   ► be more annoying to more people than us simply saying, "Ask, upgrade!"

01:17:08 ◼   ► It's the only way to do it.

01:17:10 ◼   ► I would like to know, and this is an iPad Pro related question, "I travel a lot for

01:17:14 ◼   ► business and I'm thinking about getting an iPad Pro to replace my laptop.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It would be thrown in a bag and into luggage bins, etc. during my travel.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Do I have to worry about the ruggedness of the iPad Pro?"

01:17:24 ◼   ► So for me, I think one of the key things you have to remember is that this device is basically

01:17:29 ◼   ► just a screen.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Like a laptop kind of protects itself by closing, so like all of the stuff that could easily

01:17:36 ◼   ► get broken is contained within itself, right?

01:17:38 ◼   ► The keyboard and the screen.

01:17:40 ◼   ► So I think you've got to get a good case, a nice rugged case, and you'll be fine.

01:17:44 ◼   ► I have a smart cover on mine.

01:17:45 ◼   ► You can pay an incredible amount of money to get the smart case, which goes in the back

01:17:49 ◼   ► as well.

01:17:50 ◼   ► I don't know just how good at protecting things they are,

01:17:53 ◼   ► but I've always had smart covers on my iPads

01:17:56 ◼   ► and they've always been fine.

01:17:57 ◼   ► But of course, this thing is bigger.

01:17:58 ◼   ► It's probably easier to break because of its size.

01:18:01 ◼   ► But I, you know, it's pretty tough.

01:18:05 ◼   ► - It's pretty rigid in a way that laptop screens aren't

01:18:08 ◼   ► because laptop screens, yeah, when you close them,

01:18:10 ◼   ► they're also sort of protected by the rigidity

01:18:13 ◼   ► of the base of the laptop.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And here, the whole, it's an iPad, it feels like an iPad.

01:18:18 ◼   ► It's got that aluminum back.

01:18:19 ◼   ► it's pretty strong, but you wanna cover the screen

01:18:22 ◼   ► so that the screen is protected.

01:18:24 ◼   ► And yeah, I've just used a smart cover on all of my iPads.

01:18:27 ◼   ► But if you really are gonna be hard on it,

01:18:30 ◼   ► then I would say try to get another,

01:18:31 ◼   ► something more rugged, something, you know,

01:18:35 ◼   ► but that's fine.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I think it'll be fine as long as it's in a nice case.

01:18:38 ◼   ► The question is what kind of cases

01:18:39 ◼   ► are out there right now for the iPad Pro?

01:18:41 ◼   ► - I don't think there are many.

01:18:42 ◼   ► - You may have to wait a little bit,

01:18:44 ◼   ► but I think it'll be fine as long as you get a case for it.

01:18:47 ◼   ► - Yep, I completely agree.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Mickey would like to know, "Should I choose Apple's keyboard cover or the Logitech Create?"

01:18:53 ◼   ► If you actually had any time with Logitech Create.

01:18:55 ◼   ► None.

01:18:56 ◼   ► None.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Haven't even seen it.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Haven't touched it.

01:18:59 ◼   ► So basically, I've spoke to a few different people about this and everyone seems to say

01:19:02 ◼   ► the same thing.

01:19:03 ◼   ► If you want a good cover that's a keyboard, go for the smart keyboard.

01:19:07 ◼   ► If you want a good keyboard that you can put on your iPad, go for the Logitech Create.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but Logitech Create, I mean, it's sort of, you snap your iPad into it.

01:19:14 ◼   ► So you're basically turning your iPad into a laptop by snapping it in.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And so, and I mentioned this in my review,

01:19:20 ◼   ► I think unless you're somebody who really needs

01:19:23 ◼   ► that combination of, I've always got my keyboard with me

01:19:27 ◼   ► and it's ready to go at a moment's notice.

01:19:29 ◼   ► If you can slip a Bluetooth keyboard in a bag somewhere

01:19:34 ◼   ► and bring it out when you need it

01:19:36 ◼   ► and not have to walk around,

01:19:38 ◼   ► I mean, that's what the smart keyboard

01:19:40 ◼   ► and I think the Logitech Create keyboards are good for

01:19:42 ◼   ► is like, you're sort of treating it like a laptop.

01:19:44 ◼   ► You always wanna have your keyboard with you.

01:19:46 ◼   ► but I don't generally use my iPad that way.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And so you can save a lot of money

01:19:51 ◼   ► and get a better keyboard by buying a Bluetooth keyboard

01:19:55 ◼   ► and pairing it.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And yeah, you have to charge it or change the batteries,

01:19:58 ◼   ► but pairing it with your iPad

01:20:00 ◼   ► and then getting something like a smart cover

01:20:03 ◼   ► that you can use as a stand.

01:20:05 ◼   ► I think in a lot of contexts,

01:20:07 ◼   ► that is a perfectly reasonable way to use even the iPad Pro.

01:20:10 ◼   ► And it should be part of the conversation.

01:20:12 ◼   ► You should think about whether you really need

01:20:15 ◼   ► one of these two accessories, just because they're made for the iPad Pro, that's not

01:20:18 ◼   ► enough of a reason. You need to, you know, will I use them in a way that makes it necessary

01:20:24 ◼   ► that I use them.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Luca would like to know how we use Slack at Relay FM and why do we prefer it to iMessage

01:20:32 ◼   ► or other messaging platforms. So the reason that I love Slack over anything else is in

01:20:38 ◼   ► this one application, I have all types of communication with people. So we have instant

01:20:44 ◼   ► So like one-on-one conversations like me and Jason may have it

01:20:47 ◼   ► We're just chatting about stuff or maybe we're setting up stuff for a show. We can have instant messages like that

01:20:51 ◼   ► We have group chats. So like for connected we have a connected like a private connected group

01:20:56 ◼   ► It's me Federico and Steven we talk as a three

01:20:59 ◼   ► We talk about things as a three as friends and also talk about things as you know for the show for business

01:21:05 ◼   ► Then we have like official business communication channels

01:21:08 ◼   ► Which have like everybody in them and we want to say as a business we are doing this

01:21:12 ◼   ► we want you to know about this, you should look at this, right? We have

01:21:15 ◼   ► official business communication we can do there. We have massive group chats,

01:21:19 ◼   ► like we have the general room that all slacks have, ours has like 30

01:21:23 ◼   ► people in it, and people just talking about whatever, they could be talking

01:21:27 ◼   ► about tech, they could be talking about video games, they could be talking about pens and pencils,

01:21:30 ◼   ► no matter whoever may like that or may not, it's all going in there and there's

01:21:34 ◼   ► nothing anybody can do about it. Sorry Casey. Sorry Casey, it's just the way it is.

01:21:39 ◼   ► and sorry Jason because we have in pension today you did that but that's it

01:21:43 ◼   ► right it's just a big chat room that everyone's in so it's basically it's we

01:21:47 ◼   ► have all of these different types of communication all in one place it's all

01:21:51 ◼   ► searchable it's all archived so in case we need it for later it stops people

01:21:56 ◼   ► from having conversations in email and then they get lost and then you continue

01:22:00 ◼   ► in IM like it's just a way of keeping all of our communication in one place

01:22:04 ◼   ► with and everybody just goes to that place when they want to talk to somebody

01:22:07 ◼   ► in our company. It's very, very cool for that. I love it.

01:22:11 ◼   ► I mean, the small group conversations could be done in something like

01:22:15 ◼   ► iMessage. That would be fine, but the nice thing about about Slack is that

01:22:21 ◼   ► you've got the general group too, so you've got a whole bunch of people who

01:22:24 ◼   ► are able to have conversations, and then you can set up interest channels and you

01:22:27 ◼   ► can set up private groups of different sizes, and it's all in one place. So

01:22:33 ◼   ► So I think that's the advantage there. Also, cross-platform, I mean, our friends, the hosts

01:22:39 ◼   ► of the material podcast on Relay cannot read those iMessages on their phones, right?

01:22:45 ◼   ► >> I'm not sure they can get email on their Android phones either, right?

01:22:49 ◼   ► >> Yeah, can they?

01:22:50 ◼   ► >> It's only the Gmail, they don't get email.

01:22:52 ◼   ► >> Oh, interesting.

01:22:53 ◼   ► >> It's a different letter, I think.

01:22:54 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I'm sure that's accurate.

01:22:56 ◼   ► >> Mm-hmm, email, Jason.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Lex Friedman posted a thing the other day about how many different ways people can get

01:23:04 ◼   ► in touch with him. And I replied to him. I sent him a Slack message on the incomparable

01:23:09 ◼   ► Slack. I sent him an iMessage. I sent him an AOL Instant Messenger IM. I sent him a

01:23:13 ◼   ► Google Talk message and I sent him a Facebook message, all saying the same thing as a reply.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Because it's true, it could be everywhere. But that's the nice thing about Slack is that

01:23:26 ◼   ► you set these groups up for people who are working together on project or other, and

01:23:29 ◼   ► it forms like a little mini community, and then you've also got your private messaging

01:23:32 ◼   ► that's kind of built in. And if it was just private messaging or just the group chat room,

01:23:36 ◼   ► I think it would be less effective. But once, you know, everybody knows to sort of like

01:23:39 ◼   ► keep an eye on Slack, then it becomes easier to get their direct attention in Slack by

01:23:45 ◼   ► a direct message in a way. Like I don't have the iMessage addresses of a lot of the people

01:23:51 ◼   ► that I work with, but I don't need it because I can just see their name in Slack and send

01:23:56 ◼   ► them a message or a couple names. And that's been very effective, actually. So I use iMessage

01:24:02 ◼   ► a lot less now.

01:24:04 ◼   ► >> Joshua would like to know, "What do you think of using SoundCloud for podcast hosting?

01:24:08 ◼   ► I'm using Squarespace right now. What better stats?" Now, I would say I have never used

01:24:13 ◼   ► SoundCloud and I know that Jason has, so I'll get his input on the actual service itself.

01:24:18 ◼   ► I would say if you have a podcast you should be using some sort of service that has statistics.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Squarespace is great for creating websites around podcasts and you can host your stuff

01:24:27 ◼   ► there and it's fine, but you don't actually get any statistics for the uploads of the

01:24:31 ◼   ► files and the downloads of the files, you don't get any of that.

01:24:34 ◼   ► So I always say you should use a third party in that scenario.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I use Libsyn, we use Libsyn at Relay FM, they've been around forever and their statistics are

01:24:44 ◼   ► well trusted.

01:24:45 ◼   ► loads of other great services. There's one that I really like as well called

01:24:48 ◼   ► Simplecast, which also creates really good-looking websites as well for you, so

01:24:53 ◼   ► you can check those guys out. But there is of course SoundCloud, which I know

01:24:56 ◼   ► that you've used, Jason. Yeah, SoundCloud, you know, they've been,

01:25:01 ◼   ► they've added podcast functionality, but their goal is to sort of be the YouTube

01:25:06 ◼   ► of audio, so that they try to drive people to the website. So you can post

01:25:09 ◼   ► sounds on a SoundCloud account that's got the premium version that has

01:25:14 ◼   ► podcasting built in and it'll generate a feed. I don't like SoundCloud because

01:25:20 ◼   ► their attitude, they are very reluctant to share the mp3 file with you. There

01:25:26 ◼   ► are ways to get it but like the default is they want you to, if you're seeing a

01:25:33 ◼   ► podcast on the web, they want you to use their player to play it. They don't want

01:25:37 ◼   ► to provide you with like a download URL which makes it really frustrating if you

01:25:40 ◼   ► want to use something like Huffduffer or you just want to download the file for

01:25:43 ◼   ► later or most importantly, sometimes there's a download button. So that's okay. But mostly

01:25:48 ◼   ► like the download button generates a download URL that doesn't seem to be the permanent

01:25:53 ◼   ► download URL. So if you want to link to an MP3 on SoundCloud, they don't want to let

01:25:56 ◼   ► you do it. If you want to put it in a different RSS feed, they don't want to let you do it.

01:26:00 ◼   ► It's kind of like they want to be a podcast citizen, but they also want the control and

01:26:06 ◼   ► I don't love it. And so if you like SoundCloud and it works for you, it's super easy. We

01:26:10 ◼   ► to use it for some stuff for Macworld and for the incomparable, but at this point I'm

01:26:14 ◼   ► using Libsyn, and it's pretty cheap for the basic plan, and I think that's the--and it's

01:26:21 ◼   ► got stats. So I think for most people that's what I recommend at this point is Libsyn,

01:26:27 ◼   ► because you can start off with a very cheap plan, and you do have to pay, but it's probably

01:26:33 ◼   ► not a lot of money, you know, whatever it is, five bucks, eight bucks a month or something

01:26:37 ◼   ► like that.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I recommend the $20 a month plan. I know that obviously you're getting into an amount of

01:26:42 ◼   ► money there, but the $20 a month plan gives you advanced statistics, which it doesn't

01:26:48 ◼   ► let you know a lot of stuff, but you can get geographical breakdown, technology breakdown

01:26:52 ◼   ► so you can see what apps people are listening in and stuff like that. I like it for that.

01:26:56 ◼   ► You can definitely go with a cheaper plan than that.

01:26:58 ◼   ► You can start with $5, and the way it works is it's about how your upload is. So if you've

01:27:03 ◼   ► got a short podcast or you only have a couple podcasts a month, the $5 plan, it's $50 a

01:27:08 ◼   ► megs in podcast files and for $15 a month it's 250 megs which is perfect for

01:27:13 ◼   ► like a weekly podcast.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Definitely.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Right so that's Ask Upgrade this week. So this is usually where the episode will end.

01:27:20 ◼   ► However we have of course a Myke at the Movies week so we have a special segment

01:27:24 ◼   ► and we're about to start talking about the "Sure Thing" which is our Myke at the

01:27:29 ◼   ► Movies pick for this week. But Myke at the Movies this time is brought to you

01:27:33 ◼   ► by our friends over at Igloo who give you the internet you'll actually like.

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01:27:56 ◼   ► It felt very much at home and Internet Explorer right maybe tells you all you need to know

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01:29:27 ◼   ► Go and find out more and sign up today.

01:29:29 ◼   ► goo-software.com/upgrade.

01:29:32 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Igloo for supporting this show

01:29:34 ◼   ► and Real AFM.

01:29:35 ◼   ► So, Jason, "The Sure Thing" is our pick today.

01:29:41 ◼   ► - It is.

01:29:42 ◼   ► - My first comment about "The Sure Thing"

01:29:45 ◼   ► is that it is impossible to find.

01:29:47 ◼   ► It is not available for streaming or purchasing online.

01:29:51 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:29:52 ◼   ► - So I went into a bit of a panic mode over the weekend

01:29:56 ◼   ► as I could not find this movie.

01:29:58 ◼   ► I have a theory, also speaking of Slack,

01:30:03 ◼   ► our friend Casey had a file in the Slack of this movie.

01:30:07 ◼   ► - Did he? I wouldn't know.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's available digitally

01:30:11 ◼   ► in the secret Slack channel about this movie.

01:30:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a theory about it,

01:30:18 ◼   ► which is that the music in it has made it difficult to,

01:30:26 ◼   ► So it's available, like the DVD is a Shout Factory DVD

01:30:30 ◼   ► and a lot of the Shout Factory stuff,

01:30:32 ◼   ► it's higher priced than it's like, it lists at $25.

01:30:35 ◼   ► It's higher priced.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And they do that because they're,

01:30:38 ◼   ► the main company doesn't wanna release it

01:30:42 ◼   ► because it's gonna be too much to get the music rights.

01:30:45 ◼   ► And then Shout Factory basically says,

01:30:46 ◼   ► "Okay, we will clear all the music rights

01:30:47 ◼   ► and release it at a higher price and a lower volume

01:30:51 ◼   ► for the people who really wanna see it."

01:30:52 ◼   ► Because the soundtrack to The Sure Thing is staggering.

01:30:55 ◼   ► In fact, I think it seems much more impressive now

01:30:59 ◼   ► as a representative of the '80s than it did at the time.

01:31:04 ◼   ► It feels like songs selected for a movie we'd make today

01:31:10 ◼   ► set in the '80s.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Like, well, we gotta have a song by these people

01:31:14 ◼   ► and that song is very '80s and all of that,

01:31:16 ◼   ► but it's just the songs they pick for this movie.

01:31:18 ◼   ► By the way, the musical supervisor I looked up

01:31:20 ◼   ► while I was watching it for this movie

01:31:22 ◼   ► is also the musical supervisor for "Real Genius."

01:31:24 ◼   ► So it's the same person picking the songs for both, which also made me laugh.

01:31:28 ◼   ► But it's a very 80s soundtrack and my guess is that the music rights are probably very

01:31:34 ◼   ► expensive and that may be why it's not available streaming.

01:31:38 ◼   ► That is a good theory.

01:31:39 ◼   ► I like that theory.

01:31:40 ◼   ► There is a lot of music throughout this.

01:31:43 ◼   ► When the movie opens, it opens very 80s.

01:31:46 ◼   ► It has a very 80s song and has this beautiful 80s font, right?

01:31:52 ◼   ► all like fluorescent, streaking across the screen, right? You would know this if you could find the movie, right?

01:31:59 ◼   ► Did you end up seeing the movie, Myke? Yes, luckily I did. It stumbled upon me somehow. Somehow. I just

01:32:07 ◼   ► want to mention about the music. Rod Stewart, Kiwi Lewis and the News, Sammy Hagar, Quiet Riot, John

01:32:13 ◼   ► John Waite, Jay Giles' band, the Eagles, or sorry, Eagles, The Cars, Wang Chung, Lionel

01:32:21 ◼   ► Ritchie and Peter Wolf. So it is a, and it's Lights Out by Peter Wolf. So it is a super

01:32:28 ◼   ► uber 80s kind of soundtrack. But I could also see why that might be very expensive if they

01:32:33 ◼   ► didn't have all the, if they had to re-license all that music for streaming at home video.

01:32:38 ◼   ► So the only thing that I knew about this movie or believe that I knew about this movie is

01:32:42 ◼   ► you referred to it last week as a sex comedy. So my question before going into this was,

01:32:47 ◼   ► is this real genius or is this American Pie? I will find out.

01:32:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think the reality is it is like some of the other movies that we've watched,

01:32:59 ◼   ► including Say Anything, it is a movie that wants you to think that it's a

01:33:06 ◼   ► horny teen sex comedy sort of movie when it's not.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Yes, that I will get to this a little bit later on this put a pin in that for now

01:33:14 ◼   ► But this one tries harder than say anything does right say anything doesn't really they have the one party scene

01:33:20 ◼   ► But say anything really doesn't get too far down the road or sure thing spends a good 25 minutes

01:33:26 ◼   ► Really wanting you to think that this is all about a couple of guys who want to get laid

01:33:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and the time you realize so the sure thing is

01:33:35 ◼   ► The show character the person that the girl who is a sure thing like that

01:33:40 ◼   ► We're gonna get our main character junkie sack who plays a character called Gib

01:33:44 ◼   ► Walter Gibson is gonna go to his friends college in California because there is this girl there who is a sure thing for him

01:33:51 ◼   ► Like his friend Anthony Edwards from ER and Top Gun

01:33:55 ◼   ► very young as his friend the dude in going to college in California and

01:34:00 ◼   ► And Nicolette Sheridan, who went on to be on like "Knots Landing" and she did a whole bunch of other things.

01:34:05 ◼   ► And her role is credited in the credits as the sure thing. That is who she is. She never has a name.

01:34:13 ◼   ► She's blonde and beautiful and sits out on the beach and appears in the various fantasy sequences of John Cusack's gib.

01:34:22 ◼   ► But before we even finish the credits, there was something that I noticed that really made me smile.

01:34:26 ◼   ► executive producer Henry Winkler. Yes. Where did they come from? So it's a funny thing about what

01:34:35 ◼   ► Henry Winkler did sort of post Fonz which was get into producing and he produced a bunch of movies

01:34:45 ◼   ► that would surprise you and TV series. I believe he was one of the producers on MacGyver, the TV

01:34:50 ◼   ► series as well. But he did this film and there was another big movie that he's listed as

01:35:00 ◼   ► a producer on. God, what is it? Anyway, yeah, he had a whole--he also directed. He directed

01:35:10 ◼   ► some movies and he produced some movies. It was very much his, "Okay, I've been a sitcom

01:35:14 ◼   ► star on Happy Days and now I want to do some other things." And so he produced and directed

01:35:19 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff so he is listed as one of the executive producers on the sure thing

01:35:23 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:35:24 ◼   ► I'm looking at his IMDB page right now there's a ton of stuff like I was thinking oh I'll

01:35:31 ◼   ► just go and find out what that thing was I will be here all day.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Yeah oh yeah it's crazy the stuff that he's produced so I think that's part of the story

01:35:43 ◼   ► is that he did a whole bunch of sort of post fawns things but yeah he's listed as an executive

01:35:48 ◼   ► producer on Sure Thing. So I like that it kind of it starts off with Gibb. We

01:35:57 ◼   ► should say we should say this is directed by Rob Reiner who we've already seen

01:36:00 ◼   ► this is Spinal Tap and and the Princess Bride from and then stars John Cusack who

01:36:05 ◼   ► we've already seen with Say Anything. So it starts off Cusack is giving his

01:36:10 ◼   ► chat up line to a girl and it's about space and I wonder if this was

01:36:14 ◼   ► potential for why you love this movie is that he uses space as a pickup line. He's so

01:36:18 ◼   ► bad at it. Yeah, it doesn't work. Consider the universe. He says with his high voice, he's 19

01:36:23 ◼   ► in this movie. Very young in this movie. He's four years younger than, this is four years before Say

01:36:27 ◼   ► Anything, and his voice hasn't dropped basically yet. And I like that the movie's set up really

01:36:35 ◼   ► well. Like, it begins at the ending for these two friends. They've just graduated high school and

01:36:41 ◼   ► they're about to go off to college. Like, that's, I really like that as the way that the movie begins

01:36:45 ◼   ► because it just puts a pin in where these people are in their lives. They don't do it

01:36:49 ◼   ► in a ham-fisted way, they don't do it with a lot of exposition. It's just a couple of

01:36:52 ◼   ► minutes and then they move on to the rest of the movie. And I think it sets it up really

01:36:56 ◼   ► nicely.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Did you notice something we talked about when we talked about Say Anything was that that's

01:37:01 ◼   ► a movie entirely set in a period which we rarely see in a film, which is the summer

01:37:05 ◼   ► after high school and before college. And I laughed when this movie starts in the same

01:37:10 ◼   ► place, which is graduation night, and scene two skips all the way to college. And I thought,

01:37:15 ◼   ► "Wow, say anything just happened in between those two scenes," because this movie's got

01:37:19 ◼   ► to--it's time to move on. The point is shorthand. They're in high school. It's all the expectations

01:37:23 ◼   ► of going off to college. There's that funny line where Anthony Edwards is trying to give

01:37:29 ◼   ► him a pep talk about how he's going to be more lucky with the ladies in college. He

01:37:34 ◼   ► said, "Forget about these high school girls. Pretty soon they'll all be college girls."

01:37:37 ◼   ► And he says, "But it's the same girls. They just go to college." And he says, "No, no,

01:37:40 ◼   ► no. They'll be college girls then. This dream that is nonsensical about it."

01:37:45 ◼   ► It's just so it's so naive and and funny and dumb and and then we cut to he's at an unspecified Northeastern University

01:37:52 ◼   ► So he's taken English and I really love his lecturer. Oh

01:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah, she is such a fantastic character. She's so full of life and fun

01:38:02 ◼   ► And I loved it like, you know

01:38:05 ◼   ► She's she wants them to express themselves more in their writing and she says stuff like sleep when you want to not when you think

01:38:11 ◼   ► you must make love in a hammock like it's like she's just saying all this

01:38:15 ◼   ► stuff like just prancing around the room. She's Swedish so she's got this accent so

01:38:19 ◼   ► you're like she's this vaguely European dynamic yeah mm-hmm and I really like

01:38:25 ◼   ► that I really like that a lot I also love the swim in pool monologue right so

01:38:30 ◼   ► as so at this point Gib has set his sights on Amanda that is who he is

01:38:37 ◼   ► really interested in and he's trying to get her to go on a date with him and she

01:38:43 ◼   ► is going for a swim in a pool and she's doing lengths and he's just walking up

01:38:47 ◼   ► and down the pool in increasing desperation of what like absolute

01:38:52 ◼   ► melodrama of why she should give him a shot and how it's like completely end

01:38:56 ◼   ► his life and then he jumps into the pool it's like would you save a drowning man

01:38:59 ◼   ► like it's all I really like that bit. It's Alison by the way. Alison sorry. You got

01:39:04 ◼   ► bad handwriting there, but we knew that.

01:39:06 ◼   ► I was trying to do it from memory. He didn't do a very good job.

01:39:10 ◼   ► Yeah, so yeah, he follows her. It's sweet. He fancies himself, I think, as a lot of—is

01:39:20 ◼   ► this in reality or not? But it's certainly in movies that a lot of teenage young men

01:39:24 ◼   ► fancy themselves powerful pickup artist type people where they're like, "Oh, I can get

01:39:31 ◼   ► the ladies to go out with me. I've got a line." You know, he's working on his lines and stuff

01:39:34 ◼   ► like that. You got to get some new material. And then with her, he has this whole scheme,

01:39:39 ◼   ► which is that he's going to get her to help him with his studying, his paper, because

01:39:48 ◼   ► he's got to rewrite this paper that he wrote about burning, about not burning the roof

01:39:52 ◼   ► of your mouth when you eat pizza. That is what his paper is about, by the way. And the

01:39:57 ◼   ► The moment, so she finally agrees.

01:40:00 ◼   ► And the moment that they sit down to work

01:40:02 ◼   ► on the paper seemingly, he's like,

01:40:03 ◼   ► let's get some air, let's get out of here.

01:40:05 ◼   ► It is the thinnest tissue paper sham.

01:40:10 ◼   ► It is just so, it made me laugh.

01:40:12 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, he doesn't even go through the motions

01:40:14 ◼   ► of like, we don't see that they've been working on it

01:40:16 ◼   ► now that they're leaving after the study session,

01:40:18 ◼   ► he's gonna ask her out.

01:40:19 ◼   ► He like, he can't wait.

01:40:21 ◼   ► He immediately is like, no, no, let's blow this off.

01:40:23 ◼   ► And actually go out on a date, which I didn't ask you on,

01:40:25 ◼   ► but now I'm gonna ask you one.

01:40:28 ◼   ► - I like that when she finally agrees

01:40:29 ◼   ► to go on a date with him,

01:40:31 ◼   ► they agree on a time and stuff

01:40:34 ◼   ► and Alison goes to walk out of the door

01:40:36 ◼   ► and Gib says, "Where?

01:40:38 ◼   ► Like, where shall I meet you?"

01:40:39 ◼   ► Like, this is one of my biggest pet peeves in movies

01:40:42 ◼   ► when people set up dates

01:40:43 ◼   ► and never arrange a location or a time.

01:40:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, or they'll be like,

01:40:47 ◼   ► "Yeah, I'll pick you up for lunch."

01:40:48 ◼   ► "All right, what?"

01:40:50 ◼   ► - Like, where are you?

01:40:51 ◼   ► Do you know where she lives?

01:40:52 ◼   ► Like, I like that they just put that on there.

01:40:54 ◼   ► like it really annoys me when people leave that out in movies it's like just

01:40:58 ◼   ► this ambiguous time and all location of where this date will occur yeah and then

01:41:03 ◼   ► you know he's kind of psyching himself up like in his dorm room and I really

01:41:07 ◼   ► like the scene where his friend is Jimbo is trying to like give him the lines to

01:41:13 ◼   ► use for the ladies like you know it is like real sensitive line I feel like

01:41:16 ◼   ► we've got his arm and that sort of stuff as he's giving him the the full patter

01:41:20 ◼   ► as it were. Which he uses many times throughout this movie on various ladies or at least tries

01:41:28 ◼   ► to.

01:41:29 ◼   ► Indeed, and we also at some point in here he also gets the letter from his friend who's

01:41:33 ◼   ► at, you know, UCLA or something like that. He's in college in Southern California telling

01:41:39 ◼   ► him about how amazing it is out there while it's just the brutal winter and it's getting

01:41:43 ◼   ► on toward Christmas and it's the brutal cold has come to the Northeast and his pal is just

01:41:49 ◼   ► in a like a parody of almost of what you'd expect because that's how I always viewed

01:41:57 ◼   ► it is that even though he goes there and it actually is this way but it is like the dream

01:42:02 ◼   ► Southern California college thing which is we don't really go to school and we hang out

01:42:06 ◼   ► on the beach and everybody's got there's a beach house and there's a pool and the beach

01:42:11 ◼   ► is over there and there are girls in bikinis and we're all just partying and drinking beer

01:42:16 ◼   ► and that's all we do all the time at Southern California University, which is not University

01:42:21 ◼   ► of Southern California, it's slightly less academic. Anyway.

01:42:26 ◼   ► And they have a phone call, don't they? Which I really like. So his friend, what was his

01:42:33 ◼   ► friend's name? Lance. Lance. They're having a phone call and Gib is like freezing in a

01:42:39 ◼   ► corridor and Lance is like walking outside by a pool in the sun and he's got a Hawaiian

01:42:43 ◼   ► shot on and there's girls playing volleyball and it's like it's just fantastic to just

01:42:48 ◼   ► watch this like night and day it's like hey it's amazing here and he's like these his

01:42:52 ◼   ► friends is is um has a lady in his room and there's various various sounds coming from

01:42:59 ◼   ► the room so he's just like completely shut out in this cold corridor listening to his

01:43:04 ◼   ► friend being like come on man there's this sure thing over here get your way to California

01:43:09 ◼   ► So they start the journey to California, right?

01:43:13 ◼   ► And he goes to like this board and it's like some ride?

01:43:16 ◼   ► What is that about?

01:43:17 ◼   ► What is going on?

01:43:18 ◼   ► - Okay, so yeah.

01:43:19 ◼   ► So Anthony Edwards tells him, "Come to California."

01:43:20 ◼   ► She's got to go on her semester at sea on December 22nd or whatever, which is hilarious

01:43:25 ◼   ► 'cause that's exactly when you'd start the semester at sea is right before Christmas time.

01:43:28 ◼   ► That's not a thing.

01:43:29 ◼   ► But anyway, the idea here is you got to get to see her before she goes off and leaves

01:43:35 ◼   ► because she's a sure thing.

01:43:36 ◼   ► She was in a parochial school or something.

01:43:38 ◼   ► She is built up as this basically like, "She's beautiful and we'll have sex with you, so

01:43:43 ◼   ► come to California and also it's warm here, but you got to get here by a certain date."

01:43:48 ◼   ► And it's about to be the Christmas break, so he goes to the ride share board, which,

01:43:52 ◼   ► Myke, this was a thing, that there would be a place that you could go if you were... They

01:43:56 ◼   ► had this when I was in college. I never used it, but if you were driving to... I went to

01:44:01 ◼   ► school in San Diego, Southern California University, we didn't have the swimming pool and the girls

01:44:04 ◼   ► playing volleyball in the swimming pool, I have to say. As somebody who went to a Southern

01:44:07 ◼   ► California University, but they would have the board and it would have like driving to

01:44:13 ◼   ► LA, you know, and you would, people would like sign up to go with them and you drop

01:44:18 ◼   ► them off. And we actually had that when we went to LA for Thanksgiving one year from

01:44:22 ◼   ► up here. My wife's sister was at Berkeley and she had a friend and it was like, you

01:44:30 ◼   ► know, it was the same idea. It's like we dropped her off along the way because she lived in

01:44:33 ◼   ► the northern part of LA. So we kind of went out of our way a little, dropped her off and

01:44:36 ◼   ► and then continued on. And back in the day before the internet especially, that was sort

01:44:39 ◼   ► of how you did it, is you pinned these messages up and they did like rideshare and you'd share,

01:44:44 ◼   ► you know, you'd buy the gas or whatever and so everybody would win and that was how people

01:44:49 ◼   ► got maybe not across the country, I don't know, that's kind of extreme, but it would

01:44:53 ◼   ► totally, the ridesharing thing would happen.

01:44:56 ◼   ► - So they do that, right? They go on a rideshare and the funny thing is, is that when a gift

01:45:03 ◼   ► gets in the car, Alison is there, right?

01:45:05 ◼   ► Because she is also taking this rideshare in the car that is being driven by a very

01:45:12 ◼   ► young Tim Robbins.

01:45:13 ◼   ► >> MATT: Yep.

01:45:14 ◼   ► And Tim Robbins and his lady are singing show tunes.

01:45:19 ◼   ► They are a lovely wholesome couple.

01:45:21 ◼   ► And the whole time, Alison and Gib are just at each other's throats because Gib tried

01:45:26 ◼   ► to get fresh, I guess, with Alison, and she wasn't having none of it.

01:45:30 ◼   ► And so now they don't really like each other so much.

01:45:33 ◼   ► But they're miss they're wacky and mismatched in the back of this car with the the husband and wife in the front who are super

01:45:38 ◼   ► Perky and don't have kids of their own

01:45:40 ◼   ► so they're expecting this is gonna be a really fun road trip with the college kids and the college kids are silent and

01:45:45 ◼   ► staring daggers at each other and

01:45:47 ◼   ► and there's a lot of funny contrast and they sing the show tunes and

01:45:52 ◼   ► And they're totally bringing down the the happy couple

01:45:57 ◼   ► And then it gets to the point where they get thrown out onto the road and they have to

01:46:03 ◼   ► make their own way, right?

01:46:04 ◼   ► Like, Tim Robbins has just had enough and he just chucks them out of the car.

01:46:07 ◼   ► So they begin the process.

01:46:09 ◼   ► Well, you remember the reason why.

01:46:12 ◼   ► Ultimately he goes, Gib, after having a thing where we hear about that she's got this boyfriend,

01:46:17 ◼   ► Jason, sounds like a terrible guy, in LA, and they are sharing the hotel room and she's

01:46:25 ◼   ► gonna says I've got a schedule. It's very proto when Harry met Sally in some ways, like

01:46:30 ◼   ► she's super uptight and he's not. And so she's like, I got a schedule, you'll sleep on the

01:46:36 ◼   ► bed and alternating nights and I'll sleep on the floor and we'll alternate but tonight

01:46:39 ◼   ► you're on the floor. And he gets really frustrated with that. And he needles her in the car the

01:46:44 ◼   ► next day and says, come on, you got to do something spontaneous. And she says, I like

01:46:47 ◼   ► to do things that are spontaneous when it's been planned out or whatever she says, it's

01:46:51 ◼   ► very funny and then he finally basically gets her to take to lift her shirt up and show

01:46:56 ◼   ► her boobs to the on an oncoming bit of traffic and this outrages Tim Robbins and and his

01:47:04 ◼   ► wife and they they they throw him out of the car because I get pulled over by the police

01:47:08 ◼   ► and he gets a ticket right oh that's true that's true cut cut to he's being written

01:47:14 ◼   ► up for indecent exposure and reckless driving and whatever else for things that would not

01:47:19 ◼   ► be his fault but he's the driver of the car I guess and at that point they just leave

01:47:23 ◼   ► them they leave them by the side of the road in a place that looks suspiciously like where

01:47:27 ◼   ► I grew up it's like the the it's very clearly the foothills of Northern California which

01:47:31 ◼   ► is where they shot a lot of this movie but it's supposedly out in the middle of the United

01:47:36 ◼   ► States somewhere.

01:47:38 ◼   ► So because I knew where you grew up and that kind of thing right Gib and Alison go hitchhiking

01:47:45 ◼   ► at this point so have you ever hitchhiked?

01:47:48 ◼   ► Okay, it seems horrific to me is the thing to do.

01:47:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:47:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:47:53 ◼   ► Like, it seems horrible.

01:47:54 ◼   ► I don't like meeting people, Myke, and hitchhiking is meeting people roulette.

01:47:58 ◼   ► No.

01:47:59 ◼   ► Never.

01:48:00 ◼   ► There's this one scene where Allison and Gib have heard a big argument and she jumps into

01:48:06 ◼   ► a van, he tells her not to go, Gib jumps into the back of the truck and Allison is kind

01:48:12 ◼   ► of accosted by the gentleman driving the car, and he, and then, so then Gib jumps into the

01:48:17 ◼   ► front of the car and like acts like a crazy person. It's a really great scene and it's

01:48:22 ◼   ► like I'm talking about a total maniac like it's really fantastic.

01:48:28 ◼   ► They try very hard to lighten it because it's very dark that basically she's been picked

01:48:33 ◼   ► up by a guy who picks up pretty girl hitchhikers and rapes them. That's a dark way to go but

01:48:40 ◼   ► then it's very quickly counterbalanced by the fact that Gib pops up in the back of the

01:48:45 ◼   ► the truck and is looking in the window, which is a very funny moment because you're like,

01:48:50 ◼   ► "Oh man, he's back there." And then he pops into the--they pull off by the side of the

01:48:54 ◼   ► road and he pops into the door and the guy claims that Allison is his wife and so Jock

01:49:00 ◼   ► is like, "Oh, your wife!" And he goes like a crazy person and he says, "Now I'm just

01:49:05 ◼   ► gonna go out--I'm gonna take my wife--take your wife with me." And he pulls her out and

01:49:10 ◼   ► pulls the stuff out of the back as the guy speeds off and it's a nice moment, I guess,

01:49:15 ◼   ► where she is willing to forgive some things about him because, you know, he was looking

01:49:20 ◼   ► out for her.

01:49:22 ◼   ► I like, um, it's kind of interesting to me how this movie at this point becomes like

01:49:30 ◼   ► a buddy cop movie. Like, which I wasn't expecting, right?

01:49:35 ◼   ► For me, this is the moment where the movie flips over into Brilliant. It's like we've

01:49:39 ◼   ► set for half an hour, we've sort of set up that they're in opposition. Really, the pitch

01:49:43 ◼   ► of this movie is these two people who don't like each other but actually are going to

01:49:48 ◼   ► fall in love are forced to hitchhike across the country when, you know, and this is where

01:49:54 ◼   ► it starts. It's really, it's right here.

01:49:56 ◼   ► Yeah, because it becomes one of those scenarios where like they grow to love each other and

01:50:00 ◼   ► they're pushed apart. Like it's, it becomes that, which I wasn't expecting this movie

01:50:03 ◼   ► to be at all. I really love it when, so they're going to get a bus together, right? They end

01:50:11 ◼   ► up hitchhiking to a bus station and they're about to get a bus and have their first real

01:50:15 ◼   ► heartwarming moment where Allison gives the money to get a bus ticket but she's gonna

01:50:19 ◼   ► go earlier than him. So she leaves to get the bus, he sits down, starts watching TV

01:50:25 ◼   ► and they quickly just do a quick cut of the camera angle and Allison has gotten off the

01:50:30 ◼   ► bus and she's just standing over him watching the TV with him. I really like that moment,

01:50:34 ◼   ► that was really nice. Yeah, she doesn't give him the money yet, she offers to give him

01:50:38 ◼   ► the money later but he doesn't have the money at that point.

01:50:40 ◼   ► Oh, I thought she gave him the money at that point.

01:50:42 ◼   ► No, no, she offers to give him like $50 or something like that of her $70 but he refuses

01:50:47 ◼   ► and he's basically going to just sort of sit there at the bus station I think is how it

01:50:51 ◼   ► is but she can't, this is her opportunity to not leave him behind so she doesn't leave

01:50:56 ◼   ► him behind.

01:50:57 ◼   ► Okay.

01:50:58 ◼   ► And they're going to go on and you know, go on together and hitchhike the rest of the

01:51:01 ◼   ► way.

01:51:02 ◼   ► So then they're kind of like, they're going from place to place, like they're growing

01:51:05 ◼   ► closer together right during this period of time they're warming up to each other even

01:51:12 ◼   ► to the point where like Gib gets angry that Alison is on the phone to her boyfriend yeah

01:51:18 ◼   ► and he goes out and gets drunk yeah in a bar because because he's he thought that they

01:51:24 ◼   ► were making that connection but she's still talking to the boyfriend and he comes back

01:51:28 ◼   ► and he's super drunk but she like tucks him in at night and that sort of stuff it's kind

01:51:31 ◼   ► They're kind of cute and then the next day like he's rushing her to leave and she leaves this scheduled book that she has which

01:51:37 ◼   ► Has all of our money in it and she's planned out this whole trip for them. She leaves it in the hotel

01:51:41 ◼   ► They go on a few different hitchhiking adventures before they realize that the book has actually been lost and

01:51:48 ◼   ► But then it was to rain it starts to rain but the way that they do the schedule book being lost is fantastic

01:51:55 ◼   ► She's like right we can eat every 200 miles. So they go to a certain point they go to a cafe

01:51:59 ◼   ► They're so excited to go in and eat. They're like talking about what they're gonna order

01:52:01 ◼   ► They walk in and the camera just stays on the door for a few seconds

01:52:05 ◼   ► And then they stall back out again and gives like how could you lose your schedule book?

01:52:09 ◼   ► And I really like that at this point. They've quickly assumed the stereotypical roles of a married couple

01:52:14 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, which is really cute

01:52:16 ◼   ► Then it starts to rain and they start to like try and find a place and then

01:52:20 ◼   ► Allison remembers that she has a credit card that can only be used in emergencies

01:52:25 ◼   ► So then cut to this extremely lavish hotel that they're in with this beautiful meal that they're eating

01:52:30 ◼   ► They're the only place that took credit cards. Of course, they're eating veal and salmon and this is kind of where the movie

01:52:37 ◼   ► Ends up for me like having more heart than I expected

01:52:40 ◼   ► Like there's this scene that evening where they're lying in bed together

01:52:44 ◼   ► Like usually be one of them on the bed one with them on the floor

01:52:46 ◼   ► But this is the first night that they're gonna share a bed together like nothing's really going on because she trusts him

01:52:53 ◼   ► She says, you know, this is unlike before.

01:52:55 ◼   ► She's like, no, no, you can sleep on the bed too.

01:52:57 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:52:58 ◼   ► She's like, there's a level of trust

01:52:59 ◼   ► that they have with each other

01:53:00 ◼   ► having been through all of this.

01:53:01 ◼   ► And in the morning, he wakes up

01:53:04 ◼   ► and his arm's kind of around her.

01:53:07 ◼   ► And he's super apologetic.

01:53:09 ◼   ► Like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

01:53:11 ◼   ► I didn't mean to do that.

01:53:12 ◼   ► I feel really bad.

01:53:12 ◼   ► And so he's learned this, you know,

01:53:16 ◼   ► he's trying to honor her choices

01:53:18 ◼   ► and be a good guy and be a good friend.

01:53:21 ◼   ► And her response is like, it's fine, right?

01:53:24 ◼   ► Like she, cause she does, she totally trusts him.

01:53:26 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:53:27 ◼   ► And they, they, they have built that connection now

01:53:29 ◼   ► where it's the complete opposite of that first hotel room

01:53:32 ◼   ► scene where he decides he's going to sleep on the bed

01:53:34 ◼   ► and she just goes and sleeps on the floor.

01:53:36 ◼   ► - And then Gib goes and stands out on the veranda

01:53:38 ◼   ► to cool down, I assume.

01:53:39 ◼   ► Like, he's just like, I'm going to go stand on the veranda.

01:53:41 ◼   ► Like he just goes out there and just stands there

01:53:43 ◼   ► for a while.

01:53:44 ◼   ► But it's, it's really nice how they like,

01:53:46 ◼   ► they warm to each other in this way,

01:53:48 ◼   ► but they end up getting to LA.

01:53:51 ◼   ► So they get into this truck and Allison is asleep,

01:53:54 ◼   ► or at least they believe that she is asleep.

01:53:56 ◼   ► And Gib is talking to the truck driver

01:53:58 ◼   ► and telling him about the sure thing,

01:54:01 ◼   ► the reason that he's going to California.

01:54:03 ◼   ► Because at this point, Gib is pretty convinced

01:54:05 ◼   ► that he hasn't got a shot, right?

01:54:07 ◼   ► Because Allison seems to still be hung up on her boyfriend.

01:54:10 ◼   ► - That conversation actually begins with a guy saying,

01:54:14 ◼   ► you and your girlfriend,

01:54:20 ◼   ► And he says, "No, she's not my girlfriend.

01:54:22 ◼   ► She's got a boyfriend in LA."

01:54:23 ◼   ► And the truck driver says something like,

01:54:25 ◼   ► "Oh, that's a shame."

01:54:27 ◼   ► And John Cusack looks back and makes sure she's asleep.

01:54:29 ◼   ► And he says, "Yeah, it is."

01:54:31 ◼   ► And it's like, that's his moment of revealing

01:54:33 ◼   ► that he's written her off and is very sad about it,

01:54:37 ◼   ► but she's got a boyfriend and that's just how it is.

01:54:38 ◼   ► And he's got to deal with it.

01:54:40 ◼   ► And what happens next is that they're talking

01:54:43 ◼   ► about the sure thing and that's when she wakes up.

01:54:45 ◼   ► So she doesn't hear him regret the fact

01:54:48 ◼   ► that he can't be with her because she's got a boyfriend. All she hears is that he's going

01:54:52 ◼   ► to go to Anthony Edwards' place and meet Nicolette Sheridan.

01:54:57 ◼   ► But the truck driver puts the foot down, right? He's like, "You can't waste this opportunity."

01:55:01 ◼   ► Like he's got to get in there.

01:55:02 ◼   ► No. She's going to be gone in a couple of days. It's like, "All right, if you pay the

01:55:06 ◼   ► speeding tickets, and off they go with the truck through other parts of California that

01:55:12 ◼   ► we're being shown."

01:55:13 ◼   ► And then it's really great. Like, they're in the same university, right? So...

01:55:16 ◼   ► UCLA apparently yeah. Alison is going to visit her boyfriend who I think's name was Jason.

01:55:21 ◼   ► Yes he's Jason and he he's really boring and likes tea. Yeah so he's the worst the worst

01:55:28 ◼   ► and he wears glasses. I just realized that. He is the worst human being any you find a Jason who

01:55:34 ◼   ► went to college in Southern California drinks tea wears glasses uh super boring boring dump him dump

01:55:40 ◼   ► him ladies dump him. Why would anybody want to spend time with a guy like that? Um excuse me I'm

01:55:45 ◼   ► I'm gonna sip my tea now." Yeah, please do. Their nights really diverge at this point.

01:55:48 ◼   ► Like, Alison is like super bored now of her boyfriend and everything about him. She like is--

01:55:53 ◼   ► They're playing cards! Yeah. She wants to shotgun a beer because Gib taught her that. And he wants

01:55:59 ◼   ► to make tea and play cards and when she says "Let's do something exciting," he says "How about I spot

01:56:05 ◼   ► you 50 points at cards?" So it's insulting because he's saying she's not very good at it

01:56:10 ◼   ► and still really boring. And then Gib is off at a party right where he meets the sure thing.

01:56:16 ◼   ► But then Alison sees the party and she wants to go to a party too so she kind of arrives with her

01:56:24 ◼   ► boyfriend and at this point Gib isn't sure if he wants to go through with the sure thing because

01:56:29 ◼   ► he's in love with Alison but when he sees them two coming together he's like screw it and there's

01:56:33 ◼   ► this whole scene where they're like both as couples dancing near each other and then it comes out that

01:56:38 ◼   ► that Gib is actually a virgin even though he had claims of sexual prowess but it seems

01:56:44 ◼   ► like that has not been the case.

01:56:46 ◼   ► Or, I'm not clear on if that's actually the case because they say in the first scene in

01:56:51 ◼   ► the movie he talks about having sex a few times.

01:56:53 ◼   ► I think, yeah I know that, I think that was bravado.

01:56:57 ◼   ► Yeah but I think it's possible though that, because the implication is that Anthony Edwards

01:57:00 ◼   ► has also downplayed him to the sure thing to make her, I guess, seem more charitable

01:57:06 ◼   ► toward him. It's, you know, the sexual politics of a teen sex movie from the 80s are questionable

01:57:12 ◼   ► at best, but I think that's--because he also--Anthony also--Edwards also suggests that he might

01:57:17 ◼   ► be gay, so that's in the mix here too, which is not, you know, it's not the best. But the

01:57:22 ◼   ► idea is regardless, Gibb feels insulted by Anthony Edwards, and then it also--there's

01:57:29 ◼   ► a breakdown between Allison and Jason because she is way too familiar with Gibb and he is

01:57:35 ◼   ► not aware of the fact that they've been traveling together and sleeping in the same motel rooms

01:57:40 ◼   ► and all of those things and and so he's like how do you know this how does he know what

01:57:44 ◼   ► you look like in the morning and you know all of these things right so it's everything

01:57:48 ◼   ► is kind of falling apart she's like complaining to her boyfriend about how much this boy annoys

01:57:53 ◼   ► her it's it's absolutely fantastic and then it kind of it kind of cuts to back at university

01:58:02 ◼   ► right? That back to school.

01:58:03 ◼   ► Well, so the last scene in LA is he takes Nicolette Sheridan, the sure thing, to the

01:58:12 ◼   ► bedroom and they're talking. And earlier, I should say, there's a-- he has a series

01:58:16 ◼   ► of dream sequences with Nicolette Sheridan that are kind of amusing where there's a really

01:58:20 ◼   ► great one where he's-- where she is sitting by the side of the pool basically begging

01:58:24 ◼   ► him to have more sex with her and he's sitting in this pool chair floating around and saying,

01:58:28 ◼   ► "No, you know, I'm tired," and all of that. That is, it's staged very amusingly. And then

01:58:34 ◼   ► there are several of those, which are very, you know, teen boy fantasy kind of scenarios.

01:58:39 ◼   ► And then the last one, he has that same kind of scenario and it's Allison, right? So that's

01:58:44 ◼   ► that moment of like, "Oh, he's really got now." So here, he goes up with her like, "This

01:58:50 ◼   ► is the time he's finally going to be able to do it with The Sure Thing," and we cut

01:58:57 ◼   ► away and we don't we don't really see a realization of what exactly happens there other than that

01:59:01 ◼   ► we know that he is you know he's thinking about Allison and we cut back to college after

01:59:06 ◼   ► winter break.

01:59:07 ◼   ► And Gib has written a paper that the lecturer starts to read a lot.

01:59:11 ◼   ► Our Swedish lecturer yes.

01:59:13 ◼   ► It's called The Sure Thing and it explains the whole story up to the point where he says

01:59:18 ◼   ► that he couldn't go through of it because that's right the sure thing wanted to say

01:59:24 ◼   ► that he loved her and he couldn't do that because now he knew what love was.

01:59:28 ◼   ► The answer was no.

01:59:31 ◼   ► And at that moment she's looking back, Alison was looking back at him

01:59:36 ◼   ► and he's looking at her and she realizes that uh that he didn't go

01:59:43 ◼   ► upstairs and uh have sex with the sure thing

01:59:46 ◼   ► because he's in love with her and this is the way he chose to

01:59:48 ◼   ► express it is several weeks later in an essay in the middle of class being read

01:59:52 ◼   ► by the Swedish lady. The only way to express true love, Jason. As you do. So I really like this movie.

01:59:58 ◼   ► My problem with this movie is I'd seen Say Anything. Uh yeah, yeah, well it's, it's, it's,

02:00:07 ◼   ► it's funny too because he's like kind of a proto, he's more intelligent than the guy in Say Anything,

02:00:14 ◼   ► I think, because in some ways, because he does go off to like an Ivy League college instead of

02:00:18 ◼   ► sort of staying home and trying not to join the army, but he is a similar kind of character,

02:00:26 ◼   ► and Allison is very much like the lead in the female lead in "Say Anything," right?

02:00:33 ◼   ► They're similar. I would say if you--we haven't done "When Harry Met Sally" yet, have we?

02:00:39 ◼   ► -No. -Have you seen that movie?

02:00:42 ◼   ► -No. -Okay, maybe we'll do that. That's another

02:00:45 ◼   ► Rob Reiner movie with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. And there is, in the beginning of that movie,

02:00:51 ◼   ► there's a drive from Chicago to New York that they take that also I feel like is very similar,

02:00:58 ◼   ► and their relationship is very similar to the relationship in this movie. So you see,

02:01:04 ◼   ► you saw them out of order. I feel like this is like a proto movie of other movies. Like,

02:01:09 ◼   ► it leads to Say Anything and it leads to When Harry Met Sally. But it is not, and it leads

02:01:15 ◼   ► to High Fidelity, maybe in some ways, I don't know. But it is earlier, right? So it's, yeah,

02:01:21 ◼   ► it's not quite as fully formed. Say Anything kind of picks up after two minutes. And here

02:01:26 ◼   ► I feel like it takes 25 minutes of setup before the movie really starts to crank. And the

02:01:31 ◼   ► first 25 minutes is not particularly warm or likable because it's about, you know, freshmen

02:01:38 ◼   ► and in college who are on the make and it's just kind of like that stuff really doesn't

02:01:41 ◼   ► interest me and then it then it really kicks into gear and then the last whatever the last

02:01:48 ◼   ► hour of it is spectacular but you're right it is it is like a lot of these other movies

02:01:52 ◼   ► and Cusack is a lot like he is in Say Anything and that it is a similar kind of mismatch

02:01:58 ◼   ► relationship and it's just because I loved that movie so much that's a that's a better

02:02:03 ◼   ► movie than this movie yeah but I did really enjoy this movie I also like that it was like

02:02:08 ◼   ► hundred minutes that felt right yeah a lot of the movies that we've been

02:02:12 ◼   ► watching are two hours more so many two hour long movies that are made these

02:02:17 ◼   ► days and this is 95 and it's it's it's uh tight and bright as they say it is a

02:02:22 ◼   ► solid you know it sort of sweeps you along it's very it's uh yeah I I like it

02:02:29 ◼   ► a lot I have not seen this one in a very long time and I remember liking it and

02:02:33 ◼   ► as I started to watch it I thought oh no what if my memory is faulty and it's not

02:02:36 ◼   ► that good. But then, like I said, 20 minutes in or somewhere, I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Oh,

02:02:41 ◼   ► yeah. No, no, this is really great." And I will say my experience actually, part of the

02:02:48 ◼   ► reason I love this movie is that it's got some resonance for me and it's not because

02:02:50 ◼   ► there's that boring Jason who drinks tea. It's because my relationship, so I met my

02:02:57 ◼   ► wife in college and I had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend. And I see us in this

02:03:02 ◼   ► movie in the sense that these two characters make a connection but they are not capable

02:03:12 ◼   ► and it's one-sided and in the case of this well unless you consider the sure thing the

02:03:15 ◼   ► thing that's pulling him but that she's an illusion I actually really like that that

02:03:19 ◼   ► although she does exist it is a it is a stand-in for kind of a male fantasy of a woman as opposed

02:03:26 ◼   ► to a real woman and that's what this movie is about is that he falls in love with a real

02:03:30 ◼   ► woman and the fantasy is not going to measure up to reality. The reality is better. She's

02:03:36 ◼   ► a real woman and he loves her and that is the most important thing, right? And it just,

02:03:40 ◼   ► but I have that mirror because that was exactly the same situation my wife and I were in in

02:03:46 ◼   ► college where we were dating other people and we formed a really tight connection and,

02:03:52 ◼   ► you know, there was definitely a moment where she broke up. I heard that she had broken

02:03:59 ◼   ► up with her boyfriend right after I graduated from college. And it was exactly like the

02:04:03 ◼   ► moment in the movie where he says, "You broke up with him?" It was like, "Oh, what a relief."

02:04:10 ◼   ► Well, now there's nothing stopping us from getting together, and that is how this movie

02:04:13 ◼   ► ends. So that's great too. But I do like that overarching message that for all of the stuff

02:04:18 ◼   ► at the beginning that's kind of gross, especially, I think, 30 years later about things you say

02:04:23 ◼   ► to get women to go out with you and to get women to sleep with you. In the end, what's

02:04:26 ◼   ► the core message of this movie. That the sure thing is not what he wants, that she's a fantasy,

02:04:32 ◼   ► and that Allison is who he wants and she's a real person and she's not perfect for him

02:04:39 ◼   ► in the sense that she does all sorts of things that he doesn't like and he does all sorts

02:04:42 ◼   ► of things that she doesn't like, but in the end they're the ones who should be together.

02:04:49 ◼   ► Aww.

02:04:50 ◼   ► I like these movies of like the heartwarming love story. I'm a sucker for it and this one ticks those boxes

02:04:56 ◼   ► So it recommended another great mic at the movies pick Jason you do very well. Thank you

02:05:01 ◼   ► Thank you. This is I'm happy we could combine Rob Reiner and John Cusack. This is where they come together

02:05:08 ◼   ► So now we'll the past will diverge again, but but we got it. We got them together right here

02:05:13 ◼   ► This series is all about Cusack for me. Gotta say we gotta go for high fidelity soon. I think yeah, it's in the 90s

02:05:19 ◼   ► but or maybe even 2000 but it may be we may have to go there we may have to take a time

02:05:24 ◼   ► machine forward to there.

02:05:26 ◼   ► If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode you want to head on over to

02:05:31 ◼   ► relay.fm/upgrade/64.

02:05:36 ◼   ► Thank you so much to the good people, our lovely sponsors today.

02:05:40 ◼   ► The great people over at Smile with Texas Band of Five, Hover, Igloo and Braintree.

02:05:44 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online head on over to SixColors.com.

02:05:47 ◼   ► Don't forget to sign up for the six color subscription. You can also find Jason. He is at Jason L

02:05:52 ◼   ► J s ne double L and I am at I Myke I am y k e

02:05:57 ◼   ► Thanks so much to you for listening as always and we'll be back next time with upgrade until then. Say goodbye Jason

02:06:04 ◼   ► Goodbye

02:06:07 ◼   ► [ Music ]