Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *BEEP*

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 51. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Build It Beautiful, stampstar.com, postage on demand, and GoToMeeting. Make it easy to

00:00:21 ◼   ► meet with your team whenever you need to wherever you are. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined

00:00:26 ◼   ► as always by Mr 6 Colors, Jason Snell.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Hi Myke, what color am I today?

00:00:32 ◼   ► Uh, green.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Okay, today's a green day. Good.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Good. I have colors for six of the days, and on the seventh day I rest.

00:00:41 ◼   ► No color.

00:00:43 ◼   ► No color.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Have you picked the day?

00:00:46 ◼   ► That's transparent.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's on the Sabbath, but for people, for my religion I just made up, the Sabbath is Tuesday.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Tuesday.

00:00:57 ◼   ► when a lot of Apple announcements happen. Yeah, I'd like to be completely transparent

00:01:03 ◼   ► on that day. I have no colour whatsoever. You can't trust me on any other day. Nope.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Just Tuesdays. Yes. It's good we record on Monday then I suppose. Yeah it is, it is.

00:01:14 ◼   ► How's it going? Yeah, pretty good, pretty good. Start of a brand new week, it's raining

00:01:19 ◼   ► here in London. A lot today, even more than usual. But yeah, I'm down from the high of

00:01:26 ◼   ► the relay birthday week, it was a great week last week, lots of fun and exciting things

00:01:30 ◼   ► happening. If you haven't seen it, I would love it if you would go and read the article

00:01:35 ◼   ► that TechCrunch wrote about us, it's a little bit of follow up and follow out. I'll put

00:01:39 ◼   ► it in the show notes for this week.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a great article. I actually was kind of embarrassed by it because it's so

00:01:44 ◼   ► detailed, I'm like "wow, that's a lot of words that that guy wrote about relay".

00:01:48 ◼   ► 3000.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Mmhmm.

00:01:50 ◼   ► And did you notice about the part where I said about, and Romain quoted it, about how

00:01:56 ◼   ► many people have come to Relay because of your fine self?

00:01:59 ◼   ► Yeah I am Relay's rainmaker. It turns out I'm the cool finder, I'm the rainmaker, I'm

00:02:05 ◼   ► making it rain right now. On you in London. I should make it rain here in California,

00:02:11 ◼   ► we need the rain.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Yeah don't give it to me, we've got tons of it. You need it more than I do.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I made a horrible mistake. I just got back from a sort of long weekend trip to Spokane,

00:02:23 ◼   ► Washington for the World Science Fiction Convention, which more importantly was also a meeting

00:02:28 ◼   ► of many incomparable panelists.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And we did a couple of podcasts and we did a live incomparable radio drama at the convention

00:02:36 ◼   ► and I got to meet some cool people and hang out with a lot of those.

00:02:41 ◼   ► So many of my podcast pals are people I don't get to see in person, like almost ever.

00:02:46 ◼   ► So that was pretty cool.

00:02:47 ◼   ► We got to actually see each other in person.

00:02:50 ◼   ► It was very, very cool.

00:02:52 ◼   ► >> And we recorded Clockwise. >> We did. Dan Morin and I were in--Clockwise

00:02:57 ◼   ► number 100 came out last week, and Dan Morin and I were in the--in a hotel room in Spokane,

00:03:02 ◼   ► Washington, recording that. And you and Steven were nice to actually host the shows for us,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and so you weren't there, but you were there in spirit.

00:03:11 ◼   ► >> I always am. >> Wherever you are, you're there in spirit.

00:03:16 ◼   ► >> Wherever you are. >> Wherever I am, yes. You're a--you hover--you

00:03:20 ◼   ► You're one of my little Jedi ghosts that urges me on to do good things whenever I'm, I don't

00:03:26 ◼   ► know, walking around.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So I'm, at the moment, I'm going through a phase of buying an incredible amount of input

00:03:34 ◼   ► devices for my Mac.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Fits the season.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I currently have on my desk, I am not exaggerating, I have three mice, a trackpad, and a Wacom

00:03:45 ◼   ► tablet.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Are you shopping around or are you, because I know you've got your two-fisted input device

00:03:54 ◼   ► method, have you decided that it's more efficient to have three mice and a tablet and you know,

00:04:00 ◼   ► and you're driving one with your nose, as you do, because you're a nose toucher.

00:04:04 ◼   ► As I am wont to do.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I'm putting them through their paces and we spoke about it a bit on Connected last week

00:04:10 ◼   ► and on this week's episode of Connected I'm going to talk about a new purchase that I

00:04:15 ◼   ► made.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I've bought a new mouse which is quite a

00:04:20 ◼   ► stupendous piece of equipment. So I was just

00:04:23 ◼   ► interested because this is what I'm thinking about right now.

00:04:26 ◼   ► What do you use?

00:04:28 ◼   ► I have a magic trackpad. I was actually listening to all of the

00:04:32 ◼   ► trackpad discussion. This is some more follow out too on

00:04:35 ◼   ► ATP. All of their talk about mice and trackpads and

00:04:39 ◼   ► tap to click versus actual... I hate tap to click.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I know see tap to click is the podcasters friend. Oh, no, it's not no, it's not this podcaster. It's my enemy

00:04:49 ◼   ► Oh, I will see it in all its places

00:04:52 ◼   ► I am adding things to our show notes right now and complete silence because I'm tapped to clicking

00:04:57 ◼   ► But I have Myke do you hear me clicking? Do you hear me clicking right now? It's like thunder in my ears

00:05:02 ◼   ► You cannot hear my click my click is of my little magic trackpad is is essentially silent

00:05:10 ◼   ► But I used to be a trackball user.

00:05:12 ◼   ► For years, I used the trackball.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And only a couple of years ago, I'm probably longer than that now, three or four years

00:05:20 ◼   ► ago, I switched to the Magic Trackpad because I love the trackpad gestures and I use those

00:05:25 ◼   ► all the time.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And so when I'm editing podcasts, there was a bug at some point.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I don't know whether it was an early version of...

00:05:31 ◼   ► It might've been in an early version of El Capitan where at some point, whatever service

00:05:39 ◼   ► reads multi-touch crashed in the background.

00:05:44 ◼   ► - Ooh, I've had this, I've had this.

00:05:48 ◼   ► - So I was in Logic and I was trying to scroll

00:05:50 ◼   ► and trying to zoom and I'm like, why is nothing happening?

00:05:54 ◼   ► And I had to reboot and then it was fine.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But I had that moment of like, wow,

00:05:57 ◼   ► I really rely on trackpad gestures to do what I do.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And that's why I switched to the trackpad.

00:06:04 ◼   ► - I've had it just break in certain scenarios

00:06:07 ◼   ► on El Capitan, so like for example I can scroll web pages

00:06:11 ◼   ► but can't scroll in the notification center to get the doing stuff

00:06:15 ◼   ► but it's really weird. That's even weirder. But yeah that that explains why it wasn't

00:06:19 ◼   ► working

00:06:20 ◼   ► I didn't put two and two together that I was running the beta. I assume that's what it is

00:06:23 ◼   ► is that there's, I mean

00:06:24 ◼   ► because apps can lose it but this was like system-wide I just couldn't

00:06:29 ◼   ► do gestures anymore. I was like this is really bad because I

00:06:32 ◼   ► I do rely on it so that's always been my thing so I don't do tap to click

00:06:36 ◼   ► but I do use the Magic Trackpad.

00:06:38 ◼   ► That's my input device.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I used to use a Kensington trackball

00:06:41 ◼   ► for years and years and years,

00:06:42 ◼   ► and liked it because I liked the big,

00:06:44 ◼   ► as they mentioned on ATP,

00:06:45 ◼   ► I like the fact that you can do kind of big gestures

00:06:48 ◼   ► to move the, for me mouse use was always,

00:06:52 ◼   ► it's super like your hand is tight,

00:06:55 ◼   ► your fingers are kind of grasping that mouse,

00:06:57 ◼   ► and then you're kind of very carefully moving it around.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And what I liked about the trackball

00:07:01 ◼   ► is that you can make big gestures,

00:07:03 ◼   ► just kind of roll the ball up into the corner

00:07:05 ◼   ► and then click and things like that.

00:07:07 ◼   ► And I essentially still do that.

00:07:10 ◼   ► The habits from those days serve me pretty well

00:07:13 ◼   ► with the track pad, 'cause I can still just sort of like

00:07:15 ◼   ► flip my finger across the track pad

00:07:16 ◼   ► and the cursor goes in the general direction I want it to go.

00:07:20 ◼   ► What, okay, so why do you have the graphics tablet

00:07:25 ◼   ► since you are not an artist?

00:07:27 ◼   ► - Gray uses one and he uses it for audio editing.

00:07:31 ◼   ► - I told you to stop hanging out with this guy.

00:07:33 ◼   ► He's a bad influence.

00:07:34 ◼   ► I know, and he suggested it to me to try and it's surprisingly compelling as a way to do

00:07:44 ◼   ► fine audio editing.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So I'm trying them all out, because right now I can't decide which of this incredible

00:07:52 ◼   ► new mouse that I have, again, no spoilers, and this Wacom tablet and the Magic Trackpad

00:07:58 ◼   ► and my Logitech mouse that I have, the MX mouse, between all of these things.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Oh, I also use a Magic Mouse.

00:08:08 ◼   ► All of these things I'm trying to work out what is the right one for me at the moment.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Because I'm trying to do a couple of things.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I'm trying to prevent RSI problems, right?

00:08:19 ◼   ► That is something I just need to be considerate about, so I'm trying to use the right kind

00:08:23 ◼   ► of stuff, good ergonomic stuff.

00:08:25 ◼   ► But I'm also trying to find what is the thing that can make me the most efficient with audio editing?

00:08:31 ◼   ► So because as well like I use two hands right now, but I would like to not have to do that

00:08:38 ◼   ► So I'm trying to also trying to find something that can be replicated wherever I'm working

00:08:44 ◼   ► I think the next time I come to London

00:08:47 ◼   ► I need to I need to stand over your shoulder and watch you edit something and

00:08:51 ◼   ► And you need to take me to whatever secret bunker Gray lives in, or works in, adjacent to wherever secret bunker he lives in,

00:09:01 ◼   ► and I need to watch how he edits too, because I'm fascinated. I don't understand how this could possibly work.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I'm tempted to actually try and make a video of this at some point.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Because I've had a couple of people say, like with this two-handed mode that I have,

00:09:16 ◼   ► So I use the trackpad over my left hand for gestures, zooming and panning and stuff like that.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And then a mouse in my right hand to do precision editing.

00:09:27 ◼   ► And I use the keyboard as well, with keyboard shortcuts.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Keyboard gestures, I stroke my keyboard.

00:09:33 ◼   ► With your nose eyes.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Naturally.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And I use a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, right?

00:09:37 ◼   ► And between those three things, that's how I use Logic.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And this is, to some people, makes perfect sense because they do it themselves.

00:09:44 ◼   ► But to other people, they're very puzzled by it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► So I'm thinking about maybe at some point trying to make a video of some description

00:09:52 ◼   ► to try and highlight exactly what I'm doing here.

00:09:55 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Yeah, because it's--I wonder.

00:09:58 ◼   ► And the idea of using a--I know people who use a pen input for interface, and they really

00:10:06 ◼   ► get into it.

00:10:08 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I just I have a hard time conceiving of editing audio that way but you know maybe so.

00:10:15 ◼   ► I've created my own crazy way of doing audio editing in order to get to be as fast as I

00:10:20 ◼   ► can in Logic but I just have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the trackpad just

00:10:26 ◼   ► like I do when I'm using my computer for everything else and you know I've got keyboard shortcuts

00:10:32 ◼   ► and I've got you know pointing and panning and zooming all happening with the one trackpad.

00:10:38 ◼   ► That's why they make all these different pointing devices, I guess, is that everybody can come

00:10:42 ◼   ► up with their own thing that works for them.

00:10:43 ◼   ► But it's just funny, I have a hard time even conceiving how you do it.

00:10:48 ◼   ► So I would love to see, yeah, I'd love to see a video or something.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Maybe I should work on that.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Should we do some follow-up?

00:10:53 ◼   ► We'll start off with some follow-up on Myke and the Movies last week.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So War Games follow-up.

00:10:59 ◼   ► So there will be some very light spoilers for this 80s movie.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Would you like to go ahead and explain the follow-up we received?

00:11:07 ◼   ► Sure.

00:11:08 ◼   ► talked a lot about like why do they come toward the end of the movie just right

00:11:11 ◼   ► into the last at the beginning of the last act of the movie when the kids are

00:11:15 ◼   ► on the beach and they're and they've decided the world's gonna end and

00:11:18 ◼   ► they're kissing and it's just gonna be this nice romantic moment at the end of

00:11:21 ◼   ► the world and then there's bright lights and a helicopter and like what is going

00:11:25 ◼   ► on in that scene and you know we talked about did the army come for them but

00:11:30 ◼   ► Falcon but Falcon is there but there's like an army or NORAD or something

00:11:34 ◼   ► there's like lightning bolt symbol on the side, fake probably, on the side of the helicopter.

00:11:40 ◼   ► So it's a military helicopter, but Falcon is there. So we're wondering sort of like,

00:11:44 ◼   ► and it's never really explained. And then they're rushed to NORAD and they go in through

00:11:49 ◼   ► that big vault door that will crush them if they don't just sort of sneak in there. So

00:11:53 ◼   ► Nolan wrote in and said, "It seems to me that Professor Falcon has come to his senses, calls

00:11:58 ◼   ► NORAD," so he was convinced sort of by the kid's argument, "calls NORAD and has enough

00:12:02 ◼   ► heavy pull with them to get the kids and get a helicopter and go save the world. And McKittrick,

00:12:10 ◼   ► Debbie Coleman, doesn't know anything about it, so there's no way he found them to get

00:12:13 ◼   ► them and isn't he surprised to see Falcon when they arrive. So that's his suggestion,

00:12:18 ◼   ► Nolan's suggestion is that Falcon is somehow involved in this. I think that's valid. I

00:12:23 ◼   ► think it's also valid that in this moment where it looks like they're going to Defcon

00:12:29 ◼   ► that they might pick Falcon up from his retirement and call him into action for this just in

00:12:38 ◼   ► case they need him at the end of the world and he picks up the kids. But it's not ever

00:12:43 ◼   ► clear, but it is true that Falcon seems to be potentially more complicit in what happens

00:12:49 ◼   ► than I was giving him credit for.

00:12:52 ◼   ► My headcanon is that Falcon made a telephone call.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it could be. When they get to when they get to Norad, he still doesn't seem entirely

00:13:01 ◼   ► convinced, but it may just be that he's decided he wants, it may be that he's decided he wants

00:13:06 ◼   ► to see it. He wants to see the end of the world. He wants to either get more information

00:13:10 ◼   ► or just watch while the world burns. That may be what he's doing there because he still

00:13:15 ◼   ► seems to need convincing at the end, although that may also be part of his thing with Matthew

00:13:19 ◼   ► Broderick where he's basically, he sees himself in the kid and he wants the kid to work it

00:13:25 ◼   ► out. He started this, if the kid can work it out, then the kid can solve it. And so

00:13:30 ◼   ► maybe it's that he's not really undecided so much as he wants to guide Matthew Broderick

00:13:37 ◼   ► to do it instead. I don't know. I have to watch it again.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Let's do that. Let's take a break and we'll watch the movie.

00:13:43 ◼   ► We'll let you know what we think. Kevin wrote in and pointed out, and this is, I will stand

00:13:50 ◼   ► by the fact that it's totally insane that there is a school group touring the headquarters

00:13:54 ◼   ► of America's nuclear missile arsenal. However, according to listener Kevin, until 1999, you

00:14:04 ◼   ► could call up and say, "I'd like a tour of NORAD," and they would give you a tour of

00:14:09 ◼   ► NORAD. That's crazy. But there you go. He sent us a link to an article about how the

00:14:18 ◼   ► tours were curtailed in 1999 and I wonder if after 9/11 if they if they

00:14:25 ◼   ► stopped them altogether that I don't know but in the eight in the 80s in the

00:14:29 ◼   ► 80s you could take a tour of NORAD. So I don't know if you know the answer to

00:14:33 ◼   ► this but I just thought of it was the movie filmed there? I don't I don't think

00:14:38 ◼   ► so I think they built a giant set in fact I think there are some articles

00:14:41 ◼   ► about famously about this this huge set that they built for John Saracusa talks

00:14:46 ◼   ► about that a little bit in the Incomparable episode about it. It's a spectacular, huge

00:14:51 ◼   ► control room set that they've got.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Right, because I mean the outside shots though, I mean...

00:14:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so, although I mean there are lots of establishing shots that are, you know,

00:15:01 ◼   ► the Cheyenne Mountain complex, the Stargate, the TV show uses those because that's where

00:15:07 ◼   ► it's set. The whole secret, you know, not even secret, government base inside a mountain

00:15:12 ◼   ► is a, you know, that's a real thing and a movie and TV trope, but I don't know if that

00:15:19 ◼   ► footage is from there or not, it might be. But they've got some action stuff, you know,

00:15:22 ◼   ► where they're trying to get inside the gates and all of that, and you know, I'm pretty

00:15:25 ◼   ► sure there's not a bank vault door on the entrance, although maybe. They just use that

00:15:31 ◼   ► door. They use that door a lot. Well, it might not look like that. The door in War Games

00:15:34 ◼   ► looks like it's from a bank vault. Like from a bank vault set, right? It doesn't look to

00:15:39 ◼   ► me like that would be something that the actual facility would use. It would probably use

00:15:44 ◼   ► something a lot less interesting looking than a shiny bank vault.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Yeah, they probably shot that part in a bank or something like that.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah, or they've got a bank vault set somewhere, you know, in some movie studio lot that they

00:15:57 ◼   ► used. I don't know. Anyway, that was good feedback and I heard from a lot of people.

00:16:02 ◼   ► We got a lot of nice mentions on Twitter from people who were excited that we talked about

00:16:05 ◼   ► War Games because it definitely, especially people of a more nerdy persuasion of a certain

00:16:10 ◼   ► age, and this includes me, it holds a special place in our hearts. And like I said, this

00:16:16 ◼   ► would not make my top ten films, favorite films list like some of the movies we watched

00:16:21 ◼   ► on this show, but it still holds a special place in my heart because it was, you know,

00:16:26 ◼   ► anybody who was into computers in the early 80s, this was the movie that spoke to us.

00:16:32 ◼   ► for the first time like that's that's somebody like us and he almost destroyed the world.

00:16:39 ◼   ► We still have some more follow up to get to but let me take our first break for this week's

00:16:42 ◼   ► episode and thank our friends over at GoToMeeting from Citrix for sponsoring this week's show.

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00:19:19 ◼   ► thank you so much to Citrix GoToMeeting for supporting this show. Really a great,

00:19:24 ◼   ► just a really great product and I used it a lot and it saved my bacon a bunch

00:19:29 ◼   ► of times, especially when I was late for meetings. You want their special product

00:19:35 ◼   ► late to meeting. I'll pitch them on that one, it's a good idea. So I see something

00:19:43 ◼   ► here that excites me, Jason. A link from Six Colors in our show notes here.

00:19:48 ◼   ► >> But with the title on those, the pen is mightier than the keyboard.

00:19:53 ◼   ► >> Yes.

00:19:54 ◼   ► >> What do we have here?

00:19:57 ◼   ► >> Well, I don't believe it.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Don't believe it, it's not true.

00:20:01 ◼   ► But there's a really interesting story that I linked to that ran on KQED, which is the

00:20:08 ◼   ► local public broadcaster here in the San Francisco area, actually, talking about a study published

00:20:17 ◼   ► in the journal Psychological Science, where they did tests about people taking notes in

00:20:22 ◼   ► the classroom, students taking notes by writing them down on paper or by using a computer.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And what they found, first round they found is that people tended to write verbatim what

00:20:34 ◼   ► was being said when they did it, they were transcribing on the computer. Whereas on a

00:20:38 ◼   ► piece of paper, you can't write that fast, nobody can write that fast. So they were doing

00:20:43 ◼   ► summaries they were trying to boil things down. And for a long time people have felt,

00:20:49 ◼   ► and there have been studies I believe, to show this, that the act of processing what

00:20:55 ◼   ► you've heard and boiling it down into something in your notes helps you to remember it. In

00:21:00 ◼   ► fact I can think of a slogan that reflects that.

00:21:06 ◼   ► My favorite paper manufacturer, Field Notes, I love my Field Notes notebooks, and they

00:21:11 ◼   ► said, they say, their slogan is "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing

00:21:16 ◼   ► it down to remember it now."

00:21:18 ◼   ► And I think that really does come from a place, like I know that's the way I feel.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I am a big pen and paper guy, I think a lot of people know this.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And when I write things down, when I take notes, I feel like it engages other parts

00:21:29 ◼   ► of my brain and it helps me process the information in a better way.

00:21:34 ◼   ► And I think that I'm able to do faster on pen and paper things like make emphasis on

00:21:40 ◼   ► something in an interesting way. So I can circle it and I can put an exclamation mark

00:21:45 ◼   ► next to it, which is more difficult for me anyway to do something like that on a computer.

00:21:50 ◼   ► I can change the color of it but it doesn't feel right. It doesn't have that tactile feel

00:21:55 ◼   ► of circling it twice and underlining it and drawing a little arrow that comes out the

00:22:00 ◼   ► side. You can do all of this stuff in apps like Omnigraffle but it takes longer to do.

00:22:06 ◼   ► to draw the circles and draw the arrows and there isn't that visceral feeling about it anyway for me like there is with

00:22:14 ◼   ► pen and paper, which is why I continue to be very excited about the idea of an iPad with a stylus.

00:22:20 ◼   ► So what these um

00:22:23 ◼   ► and I see what you're saying that's that's one of my favorite things about taking notes on paper is that you end up

00:22:28 ◼   ► circling things and drawing things. They encourage people in this study to doodle as well, which I believe improved

00:22:34 ◼   ► I think one of the groups was encouraged to doodle and doodling improved recollection,

00:22:39 ◼   ► which is also interesting. Talk about engaging other parts of your brain. You're engaging

00:22:43 ◼   ► outside the language centers, right? Arrows and circles and little smiley faces and stick

00:22:48 ◼   ► figures and things like that are coming from a different place than the language centers,

00:22:54 ◼   ► than generating the words. And certainly they're coming from a different place than things

00:22:59 ◼   ► passing through your ears to your fingers in a transcript where you may not have any

00:23:05 ◼   ► real recollection of what's being said, you're just trying to get a string of words down,

00:23:09 ◼   ► which is a problem. Anyway, in the study they then went back and told the people on the

00:23:13 ◼   ► -- another group on the computers to not do verbatim transcription and instead think about

00:23:20 ◼   ► and try to summarize and the note takers still did better. And they had the verbatim note

00:23:30 ◼   ► takers study their transcripts that they had written and then come back the next day and

00:23:36 ◼   ► the note takers still did better. So the suggestion, and there's more studying to do, they want

00:23:42 ◼   ► to do more on this, but the suggestion here is that perhaps just the act of writing with

00:23:49 ◼   ► pen on paper and listening to somebody what somebody is saying is going to be more effective

00:23:53 ◼   ► as a learning tool than bringing in a computer and that this was all with a laptop bringing

00:23:59 ◼   ► in a computer and typing in your notes and I can totally see that I totally I can totally

00:24:06 ◼   ► see that I have always been a even when I take notes on on a computer I'm in a summarizer

00:24:11 ◼   ► but I'm a much worse note taker on the computer than I am on a piece of paper it is it is

00:24:16 ◼   ► Here it is, even me and my hatred of paper and pens,

00:24:20 ◼   ► admitting that I think they're a better note-taking medium

00:24:23 ◼   ► in general for that.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And all of my handwriting is terrible.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I can usually recognize it at least soon after I've written.

00:24:32 ◼   ► Don't show me something I wrote a year ago

00:24:34 ◼   ► without any context.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I won't have any idea what I said,

00:24:36 ◼   ► but I can do it for the near term.

00:24:40 ◼   ► I am curious about how this might be different

00:24:42 ◼   ► if you use like a tablet with a stylus,

00:24:45 ◼   ► like you said for this rumored iPad Pro,

00:24:47 ◼   ► would that be essentially you're writing in ink

00:24:49 ◼   ► so it doesn't matter

00:24:51 ◼   ► and it would have the same impact on your brain?

00:24:54 ◼   ► And then, so that I'm curious about,

00:24:57 ◼   ► I don't know, I also wondered,

00:25:01 ◼   ► I wrote a piece for Macworld a couple of years ago

00:25:03 ◼   ► about writing articles on an iPad

00:25:05 ◼   ► using the software keyboard,

00:25:06 ◼   ► just very slowly tapping away on an iPad on its screen.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So not being able to type my 120 words a minute,

00:25:12 ◼   ► but much slower and how the writing, my writing style was different when I did that.

00:25:18 ◼   ► Because I think, again, I was engaging some different parts of my brain and I was also slowing myself down.

00:25:24 ◼   ► So I had to more carefully consider every letter and every word and the sentence construction.

00:25:29 ◼   ► I couldn't just zip past that sentence to the next one. I had to get it all down.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And as a result, I thought about it in a different way.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And I wonder if that is also something that would be similar here, that if you were just

00:25:44 ◼   ► typing it in on your phone or your iPad, would you do a better job because you're forced

00:25:49 ◼   ► to summarize because you just couldn't get it all down otherwise?

00:25:51 ◼   ► That I don't know.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I'm curious.

00:25:53 ◼   ► But I thought it was cool and it was pen-related, so I wanted to bring it up for you too.

00:25:56 ◼   ► You know it's going to make me happy.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I did.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I did.

00:26:00 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't—it seems totally reasonable to me that that would be true.

00:26:06 ◼   ► And probably people who, you know, students are told, "Bring your laptop to class and

00:26:10 ◼   ► take notes."

00:26:13 ◼   ► I would hope that this kind of research would lead people in education to suggest to, you

00:26:19 ◼   ► know, keep the laptops closed.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Plus they're a distraction, but keep the laptops closed and, you know, get out your pen and

00:26:26 ◼   ► take notes during class.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Because that's probably the most effective way to remember what you're being taught.

00:26:34 ◼   ► So I want to just do one last piece of follow-up for this week, which is a recommendation that

00:26:41 ◼   ► Matthew Pansarino made on the last episode of the talk show with Jon Gruber about the

00:26:45 ◼   ► Magic Rex Twitter account.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Are you familiar with this?

00:26:48 ◼   ► Do you know what this is?

00:26:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been using it for a while.

00:26:52 ◼   ► So it's a Twitter account that you follow.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It's @MagicRex, R-E-C-S, and it DMs you every now and then with a recommendation of somebody

00:27:02 ◼   ► you should follow or a tweet that you should look for. So I've been following it for a

00:27:07 ◼   ► few weeks now and I'm happy to say that I really like it. It works really well and I

00:27:13 ◼   ► have, basically what it does is it's maybe every few days I think it's been happening

00:27:17 ◼   ► for me, it will send me a DM and be like "Jason, John and Casey but all followed this person"

00:27:25 ◼   ► and it gives you a link to their account and you can just go look at them or three people

00:27:30 ◼   ► you know, follow, favorited this tweet

00:27:32 ◼   ► in the last seven seconds.

00:27:33 ◼   ► - Right.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - So that tends to be what it's unearthing

00:27:36 ◼   ► is interesting people to follow that I don't know

00:27:39 ◼   ► or maybe should know.

00:27:42 ◼   ► And also it's highlighting to me tweets

00:27:45 ◼   ► that people think are important,

00:27:46 ◼   ► which tend to be either big news stories

00:27:49 ◼   ► or things to congratulate someone on.

00:27:51 ◼   ► - Yep, that's accurate.

00:27:53 ◼   ► - But it's helping me find,

00:27:55 ◼   ► like all of the things that it's suggested to me so far

00:27:58 ◼   ► was stuff I didn't know about. So I think it's fantastic.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's run by Twitter and so it's used, it is attached to the Twitter

00:28:06 ◼   ► internals and it's individualized for you

00:28:10 ◼   ► and it's fast. So for example I'm looking here

00:28:15 ◼   ► I got a note yesterday

00:28:18 ◼   ► that Christina Warren, Casey List, John Syracuse,

00:28:22 ◼   ► Daniel Jalkud and one more, because it ran out of space,

00:28:26 ◼   ► followed Tanya Latner, who is the new president of the LLVM foundation, which was just created,

00:28:34 ◼   ► right? Well, we follow a lot of the same people. So that was like, here is an interesting person.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And a lot of times I ended up following those people. And then a few days ago, I got one that

00:28:43 ◼   ► was a tweet by Dan Morin, was just favorited by David Lore, Tony Sindelar, and Paul Weimer,

00:28:50 ◼   ► who's another science fiction podcaster. And that was Dan's tweet with pictures of us recording the

00:28:56 ◼   ► the live and comparable in Spokane. So as it was going on, not only did Dan post pictures

00:29:01 ◼   ► without me knowing, but I got a direct message sent to me from Magic Rex saying, "People

00:29:06 ◼   ► like this," which was also cool. So, and then I'll just share one more, which is Tiffany

00:29:12 ◼   ► Arment's tweet of the people at the museum sitting on the benches and its three older

00:29:16 ◼   ► ladies and Marco. That one got favorited by a lot of people really fast. So yeah, Magic

00:29:22 ◼   ► Rex is great. It's not, I wouldn't say it's spotty enough that, you know, it feels to

00:29:29 ◼   ► be like a good technology demonstration of the power that Twitter has, speaking of our

00:29:33 ◼   ► past episodes, the power that Twitter has to do some amazing things with their data.

00:29:38 ◼   ► And I wish that it was more customizable and it could happen more often and I could see

00:29:42 ◼   ► it in more places than just what Magic Rex spits out every couple of days. But it's great

00:29:50 ◼   ► for what it is. I just I wish I think it's a good example of how powerful

00:29:54 ◼   ► features are that they could build internally at Twitter and make

00:29:58 ◼   ► the service that much more useful. So they mentioned it on the show and it

00:30:04 ◼   ► kind of makes sense that this technology is powering a lot of the recommendation

00:30:12 ◼   ► stuff that Twitter does in the official app but the thing that makes this

00:30:15 ◼   ► different is this is highlighting maybe the most pertinent things rather than

00:30:20 ◼   ► because it's a permanent fixture in the Twitter app it's not always that useful

00:30:25 ◼   ► yeah yeah this is um yeah it's I mean what I love about it is how personal it

00:30:33 ◼   ► is it is based on who you know and then from that it's floating things out just

00:30:39 ◼   ► like nuzzle does a great job with news because it's based on who you know and

00:30:42 ◼   ► so everybody's magic wrecks are gonna be different but it's bubbling under the

00:30:45 ◼   ► surface of Twitter and they're they're using it in a few places and this is

00:30:48 ◼   ► what we've heard is that you know there are things going on on Twitter to use

00:30:52 ◼   ► this stuff even more and it's great yeah I recommend that people follow it because

00:30:55 ◼   ► it's not gonna be sort of like you know Oprah is tweeting about things right

00:31:00 ◼   ► it's not that unless you love Oprah and follow Oprah and a bunch of things like

00:31:03 ◼   ► that it's gonna be these really targeted at the people that you follow and who

00:31:08 ◼   ► follow you. So top tip. Good one good tip. False Touch. Talk a bit about

00:31:15 ◼   ► Force Touch today. This is a topic that's been doing the rounds a little bit, but we haven't spoken about it too much here.

00:31:21 ◼   ► So this is mainly in the idea, this is in the news right now, because everybody is expecting that Force Touch will probably be the marquee feature of the S line of phones that's about to come out.

00:31:35 ◼   ► because you end up with something like Retina or something like that.

00:31:40 ◼   ► This Force Touch will end up being the thing. Retina, Siri, that type of stuff.

00:31:45 ◼   ► So what are your feelings about Force Touch on bigger platforms,

00:31:50 ◼   ► like the iPad and the iPhone, so these big screens that we have?

00:31:55 ◼   ► Oh, it is, you're right, it is funny, this is the, this is like the feature that keeps

00:32:04 ◼   ► creeping, and so we're all just sort of speculating that it will continue to creep across the

00:32:11 ◼   ► product line, even though we've only seen it in the Apple Watch and in the new Macbooks

00:32:16 ◼   ► and MacBook Pros, right?

00:32:18 ◼   ► Yep.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I wrote an article which I think is not out yet for Tom's guide about this for

00:32:24 ◼   ► my good pal Philip Michaels who works over there now.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And he asked me to write about like sort of like

00:32:28 ◼   ► how it will change how we use our phones.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And it's an interesting question because

00:32:33 ◼   ► if I can back up for a second,

00:32:34 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch, it's like a necessary

00:32:41 ◼   ► added dimension of functionality.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Like you, there are things that you can only do

00:32:46 ◼   ► by force touching on the Apple Watch.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Like you can't, I don't believe you can like

00:32:52 ◼   ► get into the watch face editing mode without a force touch on the watch face and then it brings

00:32:58 ◼   ► up the customization mode. So there and like if you're like in the workout app if you want to end

00:33:04 ◼   ► the workout you force touch and then press end workout that's how it works but on the mac it's a

00:33:11 ◼   ► like a another it's not even a right click it's a it's that three finger tap essentially in most

00:33:17 ◼   ► cases they can apps can modify it to be other things but it's the three-finger

00:33:22 ◼   ► tap which is kind of weird it's like you know define this term or open quick look

00:33:27 ◼   ► which you can also do with the spacebar which is right there and I think that's

00:33:33 ◼   ► I so I think even though developers can do things with it they also can't in

00:33:38 ◼   ► most cases they can't require it because it's only on a couple of models and when

00:33:42 ◼   ► I think about how you apply that to iOS to the iPhone and potentially to the

00:33:46 ◼   ► iPad as well, I start to feel like it's going to be like the Mac that, um, yeah,

00:33:53 ◼   ► maybe there will be a way for developers to detect, uh, and change their

00:33:58 ◼   ► interfaces based on whether a device has forced touch or not maybe, but are any

00:34:03 ◼   ► developers going to really go through the effort of having sort of two, two

00:34:06 ◼   ► versions of their, of, of their apps, interface and appearance based on

00:34:10 ◼   ► whether something's got forced touch or not, or is it more going to be

00:34:13 ◼   ► shortcuts. And that's my gut feeling is, and I do think 9to5Mac did a story that said,

00:34:19 ◼   ► you know, shortcuts is sort of what is anticipated for that feature. And that seems right because

00:34:24 ◼   ► you can't, it seems unlikely that it will be mandatory features. It may be that you

00:34:29 ◼   ► can force touch on an empty part of your launcher screen, you know, the springboard, and it'll

00:34:35 ◼   ► say, you know, would you like to change the wallpaper or something like that? That might

00:34:38 ◼   ► happen and certainly there was the 9 to 5 Mac I believe rumor story about how you might

00:34:44 ◼   ► be able to force touch on a location in maps and have it jump to directions from your current

00:34:50 ◼   ► location to that location. Things like that, shortcuts right? Which that's nice, that's

00:34:54 ◼   ► a good feature. But given that it's only going to be on these brand new phones if the rumors

00:35:01 ◼   ► are true and brand new devices you can't you just can't make them make it a mandatory

00:35:08 ◼   ► gesture plus on top of that and I think we see this with the Apple watch right now is

00:35:15 ◼   ► it's not really discoverable you can discover it by accident but you know you basically

00:35:19 ◼   ► need to be told in a little you know getting started guide or something you have to say

00:35:24 ◼   ► you know you need to push hard to on the on the screen and then it tells you things and

00:35:28 ◼   ► then you can do things with those things. You have to explain it. Oh, if I push harder

00:35:32 ◼   ► something happens here and that's harder to communicate to people and a lot of people

00:35:37 ◼   ► won't get it and they won't get the differences. So I think it's problematic. I think it starts

00:35:42 ◼   ► to feel to me like it's kind of a power user feature and I'm not sure, you know, I'm sure

00:35:49 ◼   ► there'll be a great demo of something just like the QuickTime, that weird QuickTime thing

00:35:53 ◼   ► with where you kept pressing harder on the trackpad on the MacBook and the video played

00:35:59 ◼   ► faster. That was kind of a cool looking demo but it's completely useless.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that's one of those things it's like it's for the one person who needs it, great,

00:36:08 ◼   ► but who actually really needs to do that like very often so much so that it's like this

00:36:13 ◼   ► is a marquee feature of this technology.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Right. Then again, I don't want to draw the MacBook parallel too far because on a MacBook

00:36:23 ◼   ► or a Mac in general, you've got keys and you've got a click and a right click and

00:36:29 ◼   ► modifier keys and all of these different interaction methods.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And on the phone, you don't, right?

00:36:37 ◼   ► On the phone, you don't.

00:36:38 ◼   ► On the phone, it's touch.

00:36:39 ◼   ► So you can tap, you can tap and hold, you can do multi-touch, but you know, you can't

00:36:45 ◼   ► hold down a couple of keyboard, a couple of keys and click in order to get something special

00:36:50 ◼   ► to happen on an iPhone because those things aren't there.

00:36:55 ◼   ► >> MATT PATTERSON We were talking a little bit last week about

00:36:58 ◼   ► the complexity of these devices.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Isn't that a good thing that you can't do that?

00:37:03 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL I think it's a good thing, but I think that

00:37:05 ◼   ► there are probably cases where I don't think those kinds of gestures are for everybody,

00:37:12 ◼   ► but I think it's nice to have them for the people who want to use them as long as they

00:37:17 ◼   ► don't get in the way of the other people.

00:37:19 ◼   ► So as theoretically a power user, I look at that ability to have an extra dimension in

00:37:28 ◼   ► my gestures and in my usage of that touchscreen device and I think, "Well, that's great.

00:37:34 ◼   ► I can learn this.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I can get over the learning curve here and I'm going to be way more efficient and powerful

00:37:38 ◼   ► with what I'm doing on these devices."

00:37:40 ◼   ► That's great, but there are a lot of open questions there, right?

00:37:46 ◼   ► this going to get in people's way? And how do you market a power user feature for a product

00:37:53 ◼   ► that is very, you know, has even fewer power users by percentage than the computer does,

00:38:00 ◼   ► right? Because smartphones are even more a real person device, a regular user device

00:38:06 ◼   ► than computers are, I think. I feel like, you know, maybe I'm wrong with that, but I

00:38:10 ◼   ► feel like this is a simpler device that people expect even less to need to learn how to do

00:38:16 ◼   ► all the crazy power user features of. So, you know, that's my concern here is, you know,

00:38:23 ◼   ► just think, I mean, Myke, think about this. How many people are going to say, "Oh, God,

00:38:27 ◼   ► why did this thing happen when I tapped on my iPhone?" And the answer is, "Oh, well,

00:38:30 ◼   ► you tapped a little too hard. You pushed a little too hard."

00:38:33 ◼   ► Oh, man, I just realized what's going to happen if my mom gets one of these.

00:38:36 ◼   ► She's just going to push everything hard, just force touch everything?

00:38:40 ◼   ► Well, I just I feel like she would do it, right? Enough accidentally that she's gonna feel like

00:38:47 ◼   ► she's breaking stuff. Like things... it's gonna... basically what will happen is for the idea of many

00:38:54 ◼   ► people, like the idea of touching the screen performs an action and when that starts to

00:39:00 ◼   ► what seemingly appears to be sporadically performing different actions, that adds a layer

00:39:06 ◼   ► of complexity right so for as long maybe for the last three years my mom has used

00:39:11 ◼   ► an iPhone and she's actually using it now to like use the internet and buy

00:39:15 ◼   ► things online and stuff like that so she is now feeling comfortable with this

00:39:19 ◼   ► device but now if she starts every every now and then she presses it and a menu

00:39:25 ◼   ► pops up that she's never seen before like that's gonna I mean I know this is

00:39:29 ◼   ► really taking it far but like I'm using this as an example knowing her as I do

00:39:34 ◼   ► do that she would be, she would start to feel less confident with it again, because things

00:39:39 ◼   ► are happening that she doesn't understand that are new.

00:39:42 ◼   ► And these are the challenges that Apple, I mean, as we've said so many times on the show,

00:39:46 ◼   ► I'm sure this conversation has been had. If they are putting Force Touch into these devices,

00:39:52 ◼   ► these conversations have been had by the people who are building these products, right? Like,

00:39:55 ◼   ► how do we do this in a way that it doesn't get in the way of people who don't understand

00:39:59 ◼   ► what's going on, but gives us some advantage, gives some users, some percentage of users,

00:40:05 ◼   ► some advantages by using this. How do we make it understandable, not get in people's way,

00:40:11 ◼   ► not confuse people. And my point here is that this is a tricky one to me. It strikes me

00:40:17 ◼   ► that this is a little bit of a challenge to do this. And maybe the Force Touch stuff,

00:40:24 ◼   ► it's in the iPhone will be very very specific and it's going to have a haptic

00:40:28 ◼   ► feedback so you're going to be able to really tell that it's a

00:40:32 ◼   ► very different thing than a tap but it's still going to be a challenge if you

00:40:38 ◼   ► want it to be accidentally triggered as little as possible but you also need

00:40:43 ◼   ► people it to be triggered properly when people want to trigger it and you need

00:40:47 ◼   ► to find a way to explain to people that they can trigger it because they're

00:40:51 ◼   ► they're probably not going to, you know, unless you make it really easy to click by mistake,

00:40:59 ◼   ► Force Touch by mistake, it's going to be hard to find. It's not going to be discoverable.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So it's a real challenge. And not every device has it. That's the other thing, right? So

00:41:08 ◼   ► you can't just say, "Well, the good news is we can just assume that every single one of

00:41:12 ◼   ► these..." With the Apple Watch, every device has Force Touch, right? Every single Apple

00:41:16 ◼   ► Watch will have Force Touch. It's just, you can assume that it's going to be there, but

00:41:21 ◼   ► not going to be able to do that on iOS for years and years, if ever.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Well, we'll see. I actually have some stuff, I have some different examples that I want

00:41:33 ◼   ► to bring up about this. One that goes into the Android world. But before we do that,

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00:44:52 ◼   ► today. Squarespace, Buddha beautiful. So I want to talk about something I think is quite interesting

00:44:58 ◼   ► about a potential use for false touch borrowing something that I've seen on Android. So there is a

00:45:04 ◼   ► launcher called Action Launcher and I've used them before and they were actually a previous sponsor

00:45:10 ◼   ► on material, right? Our Android show, a Google show on Relay FM. And one of the things...

00:45:16 ◼   ► It sounds exciting.

00:45:17 ◼   ► It is. It's full of action.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Action launcher.

00:45:19 ◼   ► So I'll tell you what I like about it. So for people that don't know, you can install

00:45:23 ◼   ► what's called a launcher into Android, which basically is a kind of replacement for your

00:45:29 ◼   ► home screen. So a lot of them have specific functions and stuff that they can give you.

00:45:34 ◼   ► And one of the things that I like about Action Launcher is you can set these

00:45:37 ◼   ► shortcuts that you can have on folders or on apps.

00:45:42 ◼   ► So what you would do is if you have an icon

00:45:45 ◼   ► and instead of tapping the icon, you swipe on the icon,

00:45:48 ◼   ► it would give you an action that you can predefine

00:45:52 ◼   ► or would do something.

00:45:53 ◼   ► So let's say for example, you had the phone icon, right?

00:45:57 ◼   ► You could set that every time you swipe on the phone icon,

00:46:00 ◼   ► it will call a specific person that you require.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Or you have a folder, right?

00:46:05 ◼   ► You have your photo folder.

00:46:06 ◼   ► and you can tap on the folder and you can open the camera or the photos app or a photo editing app

00:46:11 ◼   ► but if you swipe on the photos folder you can program it to open the camera and take a picture immediately

00:46:17 ◼   ► so you can you can customize these and give actions to icons and folders by swiping or tapping

00:46:24 ◼   ► and you can predefine them

00:46:26 ◼   ► that's the type of stuff I'd like to see false touch do, right?

00:46:28 ◼   ► so it's like I have my tweetbot icon

00:46:31 ◼   ► If I just force touch on a tweetbot icon, it opens it immediately to the new tweet field or something like that.

00:46:38 ◼   ► So this is the type of stuff that I think would be really cool to do,

00:46:42 ◼   ► but I don't see Apple doing this type of stuff because of the amount of boxes and ticks and user customization.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So that's the sort of thing that I would like to see.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And where I see there could be utility in something like this,

00:46:57 ◼   ► But I'm just not sure if I would if I can envision a world where Apple is letting you do that type of tinkering

00:47:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean

00:47:06 ◼   ► Right Apple is gonna fight against the fiddly bits

00:47:11 ◼   ► They're always going to fight against them that was almost English the fiddly bits. Mm-hmm

00:47:16 ◼   ► I'm also trying to comprehend how you swipe on an icon

00:47:22 ◼   ► So you just swipe aren't they small?

00:47:24 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but instead of so like your finger so you sort of touch it and then slide

00:47:29 ◼   ► Yeah, you just swipe right so you touch and slide up so it doesn't register the when you move away

00:47:35 ◼   ► Right. All right touch. So you put your finger on the icon and then flick basically, right?

00:47:40 ◼   ► I guess that you're saying yeah, but you don't need to be that precise about it, right?

00:47:44 ◼   ► You just swipe in that part of the screen and it recognizes it

00:47:47 ◼   ► It may be sad. Oh, it maybe sounds complex, but it's it really is very it was like playing a game

00:47:53 ◼   ► right? When you play a game you swipe on certain parts of the screen to make

00:47:56 ◼   ► things happen. Yeah. Like it's the same kind of idea. Okay, all right, I believe

00:48:02 ◼   ► you. Maybe. I could think of some things like Apple could, because one of the

00:48:09 ◼   ► fascinating things about this is we've had developers about all summer to work

00:48:13 ◼   ► on iOS 9 stuff, right? But there's gonna be things in new iPhones potentially

00:48:17 ◼   ► that are, that they're gonna have access to, but they're not gonna know about them

00:48:23 ◼   ► until the phone comes out, which is, it's understandable,

00:48:28 ◼   ► but it's frustrating, right?

00:48:29 ◼   ► It's like, you know, here's all these cool things

00:48:32 ◼   ► that you can spend all summer building.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Oh, and here's a brand new feature

00:48:35 ◼   ► in our most popular product that you get no time to,

00:48:38 ◼   ► you get no warning.

00:48:39 ◼   ► It'll be out in a week and a half.

00:48:41 ◼   ► Good luck.

00:48:42 ◼   ► But they could like offer app developers

00:48:46 ◼   ► the ability to build shortcuts,

00:48:49 ◼   ► you know, shortcuts in on a force touch,

00:48:52 ◼   ► on the icon in the launcher screen.

00:48:54 ◼   ► And the question is, is that a single action?

00:48:58 ◼   ► You know, you can decide what the Force Touch does,

00:49:03 ◼   ► or could it bring up, you know,

00:49:05 ◼   ► could it bring up an options menu right there,

00:49:08 ◼   ► or would it, you know, or would it launch the app,

00:49:10 ◼   ► and then the app could choose to bring up an options menu?

00:49:13 ◼   ► I feel like that's the kind of thing

00:49:16 ◼   ► that Apple would probably do.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Is they'd keep it simple like that.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Like, you know, and that would be a nice,

00:49:24 ◼   ► that would be better than not offering it right.

00:49:26 ◼   ► The ability to force touch on an icon in the home screen

00:49:31 ◼   ► would be better than not offering it.

00:49:34 ◼   ► And then they could just say,

00:49:35 ◼   ► "And then you figure out what to do with it."

00:49:37 ◼   ► You'll know whether your app was brought to the foreground

00:49:40 ◼   ► by a force touch or not,

00:49:41 ◼   ► and you can decide to do something with that.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And it could be as simple as like, you know,

00:49:48 ◼   ► I don't even know what,

00:49:49 ◼   ► something that jumps you immediately into the action,

00:49:51 ◼   ► like the Netflix app just starts playing,

00:49:54 ◼   ► it leaves off, or like the videos app,

00:49:56 ◼   ► knows that you have something paused

00:49:58 ◼   ► that you went away from a while ago

00:50:00 ◼   ► and you force touch on it and it just starts playing it.

00:50:02 ◼   ► It doesn't ask you, it doesn't have you tap the play bar,

00:50:05 ◼   ► it just plays.

00:50:06 ◼   ► Maybe stuff like that.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And then somebody else might bring up a menu and say,

00:50:11 ◼   ► "Oh, what would you like?"

00:50:13 ◼   ► Especially for some automation stuff,

00:50:15 ◼   ► that actually might be kind of cool.

00:50:17 ◼   ► But it would probably be punted to the app itself, right?

00:50:22 ◼   ► Rather than Apple giving some new user interface element

00:50:26 ◼   ► in the launch screen to let you make decisions.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Although that would be cool too if they did it,

00:50:30 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like them, does it?

00:50:33 ◼   ► - No, I mean, it does definitely make sense in the idea

00:50:36 ◼   ► that you could, that the developer would decide.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Or maybe, I don't know, maybe it's something

00:50:43 ◼   ► you could enable in app setting, I don't know.

00:50:45 ◼   ► This is the thing, right? This is the battle between features and complexity, and it's

00:50:52 ◼   ► where feature creep, right? The idea is things just become more and more complex over time,

00:50:58 ◼   ► but they kind of have to because there has to be reasons that the products, you know,

00:51:06 ◼   ► there needs to be a reason that we want to buy the 6+S.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Well, I mean, this is it, right? This is one of the things Apple struggles with, and I

00:51:14 ◼   ► when we have these conversations because I do think that these are the conversations

00:51:18 ◼   ► that happen inside Apple all the time and that a lot of people who follow this stuff

00:51:22 ◼   ► don't think about.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Like they don't think that these things happen.

00:51:25 ◼   ► You know, "Well, it's obvious they should do this."

00:51:28 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, but then once you start to pick at it, it's much more complicated

00:51:33 ◼   ► than all of that."

00:51:35 ◼   ► Do...

00:51:36 ◼   ► Okay, just to get idealistic for a minute, introducing new features just so you've got

00:51:41 ◼   ► something to flog with the new version of your device is not a good enough reason to

00:51:46 ◼   ► do it. It's not. It's not a good enough reason to add a new feature just so that you've got

00:51:50 ◼   ► something to sell. I know realistically you need to do that because you want to sell products

00:51:57 ◼   ► and saying, "Well, this phone is a little bit faster than the last phone." You know,

00:52:01 ◼   ► people don't really care. You want to find something that you can demo and you can promote

00:52:05 ◼   ► really well and say, "Look how awful," or, "Look how awesome this is." Not awful. "Look

00:52:10 ◼   ► Look how awful this other product is. Ha ha! But our product is beautiful. You've got to

00:52:16 ◼   ► do that. That's the real world. But that's how companies get in trouble, I think. It's

00:52:21 ◼   ► saying, "Yeah, we got this crap. It's not really very good, but we got to sell it, because,

00:52:25 ◼   ► you know, how else? Otherwise, we got no new product." And yeah, that's the danger here.

00:52:30 ◼   ► I think with this kind of stuff, you maybe see it with a lot of Android phones, because

00:52:36 ◼   ► market is more competitive there, right? Because you have the iPhone and then for

00:52:40 ◼   ► many, I think maybe not Samsung but everybody else, it's all the Android

00:52:44 ◼   ► phones, right? I think Samsung at this point have established themselves in the

00:52:49 ◼   ► general mindset as a brand, right? That have their own thing. Although they are

00:52:54 ◼   ► not impervious to doing this themselves. Like, seemingly adding features for the

00:52:58 ◼   ► sake of adding a feature without a lot of the thought that needs to go into it.

00:53:03 ◼   ► Like so for example, when fingerprint scanners

00:53:06 ◼   ► came onto other phones, they seemed to be

00:53:09 ◼   ► just not very good.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And now, like if you look at all of the phones

00:53:13 ◼   ► coming out now, the fingerprint scanners

00:53:16 ◼   ► seem to be as good as the iPhone.

00:53:18 ◼   ► Like they seem to work quickly and you just touch them.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Like for example, I think it's when Samsung

00:53:24 ◼   ► first put their fingerprint scanner in,

00:53:26 ◼   ► you had to swipe your thumb on the home button.

00:53:28 ◼   ► But now you just--

00:53:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, you had to move it down like it was a,

00:53:31 ◼   ► like you need to slide it across

00:53:34 ◼   ► so it could scan the whole fingerprint.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And now you just hold it down

00:53:38 ◼   ► like you would on an iPhone.

00:53:41 ◼   ► - So like that's the difference, right?

00:53:42 ◼   ► It's in, we have to add something,

00:53:44 ◼   ► so we'll add a subpar version of something

00:53:47 ◼   ► to get it out there.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Apple again, they also,

00:53:50 ◼   ► there are obviously times

00:53:52 ◼   ► where they would make compromises, right?

00:53:55 ◼   ► They are not like perfect.

00:53:57 ◼   ► They will do things, I'm sure,

00:53:59 ◼   ► that are more akin to this,

00:54:01 ◼   ► but at least try and do it in the best way

00:54:03 ◼   ► that they possibly can.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Because I don't want to paint them as the perfect company

00:54:07 ◼   ► 'cause they definitely aren't with this sort of stuff.

00:54:09 ◼   ► And there will be a pull or a push from the marketing team

00:54:13 ◼   ► to be like, you need to give us a feature.

00:54:16 ◼   ► There has to be a feature to sell.

00:54:19 ◼   ► Like there just has to be, right?

00:54:21 ◼   ► You can't just say, oh, the 6S is just faster?

00:54:26 ◼   ► Like, 'cause that doesn't work, right?

00:54:28 ◼   ► It is faster and they always make a point of that,

00:54:30 ◼   ► But there always has been the thing, right?

00:54:33 ◼   ► So the 3GS had video recording, didn't it?

00:54:36 ◼   ► And then the 4S had Siri.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And that's as far as my--

00:54:42 ◼   ► - They always, there's always something,

00:54:45 ◼   ► there's always a marketing feature.

00:54:47 ◼   ► And the 3GS had an S for speed, if you remember.

00:54:54 ◼   ► And maybe one of the things we've seen

00:54:59 ◼   ► Apple and new features is that they are restrained sometimes in what they do, especially with

00:55:05 ◼   ► the first iteration of a feature. Like NFC, people are talking for ages about NFC. When's

00:55:10 ◼   ► NFC going to come to iOS? Oh, you've got an NFC chip in Android, you can do all this crazy

00:55:13 ◼   ► stuff with it, you can scan little cards and automatically log into the Wi-Fi and all that.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And when Apple did NFC, what did they do? They said, "It's for payments. It's only for

00:55:24 ◼   ► payments. Nobody gets to control it and in this first version it's you know it's completely

00:55:29 ◼   ► locked down where nobody has access to it except the system. And that that was it right.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I would like to think that at some point Apple might open that up but they may never open

00:55:43 ◼   ► it up. They might say look the only application we see for this technology is payments and

00:55:47 ◼   ► And that's it. We're done. That's it. So with something like Force Touch, we may see Apple,

00:55:54 ◼   ► part of what Apple's doing is telling the story. It's to sell the product. They will

00:55:57 ◼   ► tell a story and the story may be a good story or we may look at it and say, "Oh, that's

00:56:01 ◼   ► kind of weak. Do people really want that? Will it really work like that?" That's part

00:56:05 ◼   ► of the skepticism that goes into, people talk about that reality distortion field, but you

00:56:10 ◼   ► know, and when you're sitting there as a journalist, you have those moments of like, "Eh, I mean,

00:56:16 ◼   ► You fit that in too, and you're like, "I don't see if this is a good example."

00:56:19 ◼   ► I don't know if people would use that.

00:56:21 ◼   ► That's part of the set of questions when you haven't used the product yourself and you're

00:56:24 ◼   ► just listening to what they're saying.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Do you buy their story?

00:56:26 ◼   ► Does that story make sense?

00:56:27 ◼   ► Is that a story that's going to appeal to consumers?

00:56:30 ◼   ► Are they going to be able to make good on what they promise?

00:56:32 ◼   ► Apple's generally, generally good at that.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Not perfect, but generally good at that.

00:56:37 ◼   ► So maybe Force Touch is going to have a very specific story, a very specific set of uses,

00:56:43 ◼   ► And the developer story may be extremely limited.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Or the developer story, you know, sometimes what they do is they tell this very specific

00:56:50 ◼   ► story about what Apple is doing with it.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And then to the developers, they're like, "Well, here's the APIs.

00:56:54 ◼   ► You guys figure it out."

00:56:56 ◼   ► That happens sometimes too, where, you know, Apple's done enough, they think, to make their

00:57:02 ◼   ► case for why you could use this on a fundamental, you know, system level and with their apps.

00:57:09 ◼   ► And then the third parties kind of just get turned loose to figure out what they want

00:57:13 ◼   ► to do with it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► That's a possibility too.

00:57:15 ◼   ► But it wouldn't surprise me if this all starts out very limited.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Because that's one way that Apple can sometimes be careful about this stuff is to just dial

00:57:25 ◼   ► it back a little bit.

00:57:26 ◼   ► Like I know you want to use Force Touch for this and this and this and you want to have

00:57:28 ◼   ► a launcher and you want to have this.

00:57:30 ◼   ► No, all it does is this, whatever that thing is, if they can tell their story, if they

00:57:35 ◼   ► can tell their marketing story.

00:57:37 ◼   ► You know, I also don't know, because I don't know enough about iOS, the iOS game world,

00:57:41 ◼   ► I also don't know if game developers look at something like this and say, "Oh, this

00:57:44 ◼   ► would be really great for us because X," or whether it's irrelevant to them.

00:57:48 ◼   ► But sometimes that can come into it too, where there's a very particular story they can tell

00:57:52 ◼   ► and bring a couple developers on stage and say, you know, "iPhone games are going to

00:57:55 ◼   ► be way better because we've got this extra pressure sensitivity thing that we can use

00:58:01 ◼   ► now."

00:58:02 ◼   ► Which again, may or may not be realistic, but they may find some people to say it.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Unreal will have Infinity Blade force and you know.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Well there's so many games.

00:58:12 ◼   ► It'd be great for a life for a Star Wars game.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Well I was thinking about, I was thinking about when I used to play, what was it? Was it Starcraft maybe?

00:58:23 ◼   ► And you would, you would, maybe that was the game.

00:58:28 ◼   ► You know in some games where you end up, you're clicking to select things but you can like command click or right click on a location

00:58:35 ◼   ► and it's basically like send the thing I selected over there.

00:58:38 ◼   ► It's like a good shortcut. It's like a click shortcut.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Because those are the... there's sort of two things you might want to do.

00:58:42 ◼   ► And I can see something like that, right?

00:58:43 ◼   ► There's some games where it's going to be really convenient to be able to tap on something to do this

00:58:47 ◼   ► and force touch on something to do that.

00:58:49 ◼   ► Um, you know, there are examples. I don't know.

00:58:52 ◼   ► It'll be interesting to see.

00:58:53 ◼   ► No, this would be good for games, because any additional input you can give on a piece of glass

00:58:57 ◼   ► is useful, because they're extremely limited.

00:58:59 ◼   ► Exactly. Exactly. This is adding, like I was saying about

00:59:02 ◼   ► you don't have keyboard shortcuts or anything like that.

00:59:04 ◼   ► So there are cases where more complexity will make things easier because you'll have more

00:59:11 ◼   ► methods of input.

00:59:13 ◼   ► A lot of times more complexity makes things harder, but sometimes it makes it easier because

00:59:16 ◼   ► complexity, in the sense of nuance of input, that yes, it is weirder if you have like,

00:59:23 ◼   ► "I can touch or I could force touch.

00:59:26 ◼   ► What do I want to do here?"

00:59:27 ◼   ► But if all you can do is touch and yet there are three or four things you might actually

00:59:32 ◼   ► want to do in that situation, you know, then you end up having to have a menu button that

00:59:36 ◼   ► you have to tap that brings up options that you have to tap on and, you know, adding that

00:59:40 ◼   ► extra dimension makes actually ends up making it easier.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I also imagine an iPad of a stylus and you press down on the screen with the stylus and

00:59:49 ◼   ► then it opens a little tool palette around you and you select the tool in your drawing

00:59:53 ◼   ► app, you know, like I could see it being useful there, um, in that, you know, a simple tap

00:59:59 ◼   ► will activate this but if you press it will bring up something. I use

01:00:03 ◼   ► Twitterrific for iOS and I love it I use it all my time all the time on my iPad

01:00:06 ◼   ► and my iPhone and you know when you for some features you have to sort of you

01:00:11 ◼   ► have to select the tweet and then you have to press the you know not

01:00:16 ◼   ► everything's out on the tweet you've got to press the button and then it brings

01:00:18 ◼   ► up some options and you choose and I could see like that could become like

01:00:22 ◼   ► second nature well you don't need to hit that button you just need to force touch

01:00:25 ◼   ► and then the options come up and you press and you're done I could totally

01:00:28 ◼   ► see that. That is a perfect example of they have a tap and hold to

01:00:34 ◼   ► switch accounts. We have to tap a particular icon and then you wait and it

01:00:37 ◼   ► pops up and then you pick another account. That would be a perfect fit

01:00:41 ◼   ► for a Force Touch because it would instantly know you were trying to do

01:00:44 ◼   ► something different and give you the option. There are lots of examples. So

01:00:47 ◼   ► this is where the speculation kind of goes off the cliff though because

01:00:52 ◼   ► the real question is how is Apple going to sell this as a user feature assuming

01:00:56 ◼   ► this is a big deal, what's the story they tell, how does this make this a better product

01:01:02 ◼   ► in a way that makes people want to buy a new phone? Where does it fit into that story?

01:01:07 ◼   ► Because that's the marketing story. And then there's the real story. And it's best when

01:01:10 ◼   ► those things overlap. And they don't always.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Shall we do some Ask Upgrade?

01:01:19 ◼   ► I think that's a great idea.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Jason, would you love to tell the people who is sponsoring Ask Upgrade this week?

01:01:25 ◼   ► upgrade this week is sponsored by Stamps.com, our friends at Stamps.com. Most of us are

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01:03:17 ◼   ► will ship this back to him. Now there was a time when me shipping something, me agreeing

01:03:21 ◼   ► to ship something meant that it would be a long time before anybody ever saw it because

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01:03:30 ◼   ► that that package will be mailed and mailed soon. And I can do that because I have stamps.com.

01:03:36 ◼   ► I can just do it myself from my computer, hand it to the mail carrier and it's done.

01:03:42 ◼   ► that's I would have put it off forever and the joke wouldn't have been as funny when

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01:04:27 ◼   ► upgrade and #AskUpgrade.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Jason Cliff would like to know, "Why is the sound quality of FaceTime audio so much different

01:04:36 ◼   ► and the sound quality of a standard call on the iPhone?

01:04:42 ◼   ► I'm going to assume that this is like a good quality FaceTime audio call and if you've

01:04:47 ◼   ► ever done a FaceTime audio call you'll realize it sounds very different.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And the answer is that standard calls are, even if they're entirely cellular to cellular,

01:04:58 ◼   ► they're using the standards of the of pots of the plain old telephone system which is

01:05:04 ◼   ► a very limited set of audio bandwidths, frequencies basically. It's old. It's based on the old

01:05:15 ◼   ► analog telephone world, and it's something that we still haven't gotten rid of. However,

01:05:21 ◼   ► things are changing now. You can make calls via IP. You can make calls using this high-quality—there's

01:05:30 ◼   ► a high-quality phone call format now that is supported by some cell carriers, and if

01:05:35 ◼   ► you're on a cell carrier that supports it and you call somebody on your carrier, sometimes

01:05:41 ◼   ► the sound quality is way better. And sometimes if you call somebody who's on another cell

01:05:47 ◼   ► carrier that supports it and those two carriers have agreed to talk to each other, then those

01:05:53 ◼   ► will sound way better if you've got a relatively modern iPhone, I think a 5 or later.

01:05:59 ◼   ► So eventually you're gonna hear this in a bunch of different places and eventually we'll

01:06:04 ◼   ► say, "Hey, remember when phone calls sounded terrible?"

01:06:07 ◼   ► But one way around it is just to not use the phone system for that call and instead use

01:06:11 ◼   ► the internet, and that's what FaceTime Audio does.

01:06:13 ◼   ► So it's using, it's like Skype, it's using a computer codec to encode your voice and

01:06:20 ◼   ► it has a much wider range that is better fitted to the human voice than the old telephone

01:06:25 ◼   ► system was, and so it sounds better.

01:06:27 ◼   ► So the sooner we're all not making standard phone calls that sound terrible, the better.

01:06:34 ◼   ► It is really strange. I mean, you know when you hear it, I'm sure the listeners know this,

01:06:40 ◼   ► that the sound that comes out of a standard phone call is just not as rich as the sound

01:06:45 ◼   ► that comes out of something like a podcast or even a Skype call or a FaceTime audio call.

01:06:51 ◼   ► So you know, that's basically it, is that it's, when you fall back to the actual phone

01:06:57 ◼   ► service you have to go to the lowest common denominator sound and it's a very limited

01:07:02 ◼   ► frequency range.

01:07:03 ◼   ► >> FaceTime audio is the closest I've heard to actual people, so like, it sounds the most

01:07:11 ◼   ► like the people that I'm talking to, like it sounds very very real.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have failed to use this new high quality

01:07:20 ◼   ► call thing that they added.

01:07:22 ◼   ► That's never, I've never been on a carrier, I guess,

01:07:26 ◼   ► that supports it or talked to somebody who was also

01:07:29 ◼   ► on that carrier who supported it,

01:07:31 ◼   ► on a device that supported it, but FaceTime audio,

01:07:33 ◼   ► you know, as long as you've got another device

01:07:34 ◼   ► that'll do FaceTime and it works great.

01:07:36 ◼   ► I had a whole phone call the other week with Lex Friedman

01:07:39 ◼   ► that was on FaceTime audio and it was very,

01:07:42 ◼   ► he was at an airport and I could hear,

01:07:45 ◼   ► I could hear people around him, I could hear the announcements.

01:07:50 ◼   ► It was crazy, the detail compared to what we just assume a phone call sounds like.

01:07:56 ◼   ► So I actually dislike the way it sounds because for that reason it sounds too real.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I prefer the way Skype sounds.

01:08:04 ◼   ► Skype has what I feel to be a warmer sound to it.

01:08:09 ◼   ► They do some compression and they do some stuff with it that is different.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I mean it all gets processed right but they do some different stuff with Skype than they

01:08:18 ◼   ► do with FaceTime.

01:08:19 ◼   ► So on episode 38 of the prompt on 5x5 me and Steven tested this so we were having this

01:08:26 ◼   ► kind of discussion and we went from the local recording to Skype to FaceTime to show the

01:08:33 ◼   ► different sound so I'll put that in the show notes.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Nice.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Plus it's old enough that if you listen to it you'll get to hear how different we both

01:08:40 ◼   ► sound.

01:08:43 ◼   ► So next up we have Dave. Dave would like to know, Jason, which VESA mount are you using

01:08:49 ◼   ► for your iMac?

01:08:50 ◼   ► JASON: Oh yeah, this, we were talking about my desktop again and my attempts to make it

01:08:57 ◼   ► cleaner and every time you talk about what's on your desk and people look at a picture

01:09:01 ◼   ► they ask, "What's that thing in the corner?" We talked about this. This is how we got on

01:09:04 ◼   ► the whole orange nerf brain topic way back in the day.

01:09:07 ◼   ► MATT [off-screen, "Brain Ball!"]

01:09:08 ◼   ► We will link to my post from last November,

01:09:13 ◼   ► what's on my desk.

01:09:14 ◼   ► But the answer is I bought the VESA mount 5K iMac,

01:09:18 ◼   ► which means it doesn't come with a foot.

01:09:20 ◼   ► It can never have a foot.

01:09:21 ◼   ► If I wanna put it on, set it on a desk,

01:09:24 ◼   ► I'll need to buy a VESA mountable stand for it.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But I wanted it off the desk.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I wanted it on an arm.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And the arm I got actually came with my desk,

01:09:35 ◼   ► but it is a right angle products,

01:09:38 ◼   ► hover series two spring arm.

01:09:43 ◼   ► I don't know, I literally,

01:09:45 ◼   ► the people who made my desk said,

01:09:50 ◼   ► "Would you like an arm?"

01:09:52 ◼   ► And you know, check this box in the order form,

01:09:56 ◼   ► if you want a Visa mount arm, and I did.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And so that's what I did.

01:10:03 ◼   ► and I have an adjustable sit stand desk, that's the desk, it's the vert desk.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And that's in that story too.

01:10:10 ◼   ► That's what I was just about to ask you, I didn't remember that.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah, Wirecutter loves this desk, they called it "noticeably cheap".

01:10:17 ◼   ► They didn't love it. They didn't love it. But I think it's fine.

01:10:21 ◼   ► It is small and fits in my little office space here and is exactly what I want.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Lucas asked, "Are the step counts from the Apple Watch automatically added to the

01:10:32 ◼   ► Health app on the iPhone. I tested this, Jason, today.

01:10:35 ◼   ► That's good, because I was going to say, "Why did you add this to the..."

01:10:39 ◼   ► You're not supposed to add things I can't answer to Ask Upgrade, but I don't know the

01:10:43 ◼   ► answer, so tell me, Myke, what happens.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I didn't know this, so I wanted to test it. And this was early this morning when I was

01:10:50 ◼   ► doing the prep for the show. So I opened the Health app on my iPhone, and it showed that

01:10:55 ◼   ► I had taken 380 steps in the day. Again, very early in the morning, okay? Very early in

01:11:01 ◼   ► I looked at my watch and my watch said that I had taken 380 steps. I

01:11:06 ◼   ► opened Podometer++ which reads the information from the phone, right, and it

01:11:11 ◼   ► said zero. So my deduction from this is that the health app takes the data from

01:11:19 ◼   ► the watch and probably, and my understanding from talking to people

01:11:24 ◼   ► like David Smith about this type of stuff, that the health app takes data from the phone

01:11:31 ◼   ► and the watch and I think kind of works it out within a region between them so it can

01:11:37 ◼   ► say oh you've walked this much.

01:11:40 ◼   ► But then there is some stuff coming with iOS 9 and watchOS 2, as Steven has reminded me

01:11:46 ◼   ► in the chat room, that will make it even better and they'll be able to share with each other

01:11:50 ◼   ► because at the moment the watch can share with the phone and the phone can share with

01:11:55 ◼   ► the watch but developers can't take access of that data.

01:11:58 ◼   ► So I have, pedometer++ right now tells me I've taken 16 steps today and that's because

01:12:05 ◼   ► I've been walking around with my watch.

01:12:07 ◼   ► But not fun.

01:12:08 ◼   ► We can talk about this on a future show but I did install the watchOS2 beta and I've actually

01:12:12 ◼   ► been using my watch as my alarm clock the last couple of weeks and so I just got up

01:12:17 ◼   ► and put the watch on. And so I've taken 300 steps so far this morning, but the phone,

01:12:23 ◼   ► I haven't been carrying the phone around, and so it's only measured 16, and so pedometer++

01:12:29 ◼   ► is only showing 16, but the health app will show that same 300 steps.

01:12:33 ◼   ► >> So there you go.

01:12:35 ◼   ► >> It's getting better. WatchOS 2 will help a lot of this stuff. I think this is talking

01:12:39 ◼   ► about Apple sort of like taking a first step and then refining with the second version

01:12:45 ◼   ► of it. I think we'll see a lot of that when iOS 9 and watchOS 2 ship.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Aaron has asked have either of us found any good third-party Apple watch bands?

01:12:56 ◼   ► I haven't. I've seen people tweet about them but I haven't tried any. I did do an order

01:13:03 ◼   ► for that company that says they're making lugs that are compatible with standard watch

01:13:09 ◼   ► and hopefully they will actually I'm still 50/50 on whether that product will

01:13:15 ◼   ► ever actually ship but I'm waiting for the stuff to come from the made for

01:13:21 ◼   ► Apple watch program or whatever they're called yeah because I don't think any of

01:13:24 ◼   ► that stuff is out yet like I will look at third-party watch bands when I can

01:13:30 ◼   ► find them on the Apple Store website that's that's what the what they're the

01:13:34 ◼   ► ones that I'll look at because I just want to know that the lugs that are

01:13:40 ◼   ► holding on my Apple watch that I consider to be so dear to me are gonna

01:13:44 ◼   ► keep closed right and the made for Apple watch products the lugs come from Apple

01:13:50 ◼   ► Apple provides the lugs and then you tie into them as I watch band designer so

01:13:57 ◼   ► that's what I'm waiting for well and finally today Rob has asked us what

01:14:03 ◼   ► youtubers we watch and how do we feel about YouTube I mean I like YouTube one

01:14:08 ◼   ► of the things for me and I haven't really included these so much in a

01:14:11 ◼   ► recent I follow a bunch of different YouTube accounts and pick and choose

01:14:16 ◼   ► from stuff that I like and accounts that I like that aren't necessarily youtubers

01:14:20 ◼   ► like I like watching the verges videos and polygons videos and tested comms

01:14:24 ◼   ► videos but I don't really consider them to be like youtubers in the same way

01:14:30 ◼   ► right? They're not like individuals they're just like companies who also put

01:14:34 ◼   ► their videos on YouTube so I don't really think that they count as much.

01:14:39 ◼   ► But my the two YouTube personalities that I enjoy the most and watch every

01:14:45 ◼   ► single video of course CGP Grey and my new kind of favorite youtuber who I've

01:14:52 ◼   ► been binging is MKBHD, Marques Brownlee. I would hope that everybody

01:14:59 ◼   ► that listens to this show is at least familiar with him because he is probably

01:15:04 ◼   ► one of the most important people in tech journalism today like he just is he he

01:15:09 ◼   ► goes to every single event like he's given all of the stuff that you know

01:15:13 ◼   ► he's given all pre-release hardware and the guy's super smart and he creates

01:15:17 ◼   ► very informative very entertaining videos about technology and I am I'm

01:15:23 ◼   ► becoming a very very big fan of his work so I would thoroughly suggest subscribing

01:15:30 ◼   ► to MKBHD's channel. All right and then I am a I am a 44 year old man so do I even

01:15:39 ◼   ► watch YouTube? I do um the let's see I subscribe to some silly stuff I

01:15:49 ◼   ► subscribe to Anglophania which is a thing that's from BBC America where

01:15:52 ◼   ► there are where British people tell you funny differences between British things and American

01:15:58 ◼   ► things. I enjoy that. It's very funny. Alton Brown, the food TV network personality, I'll

01:16:07 ◼   ► describe him as, and former host of Good Eats, which is one of my favorite, certainly one

01:16:13 ◼   ► of my favorite informational TV shows of all time. He has a YouTube channel that he hasn't

01:16:18 ◼   ► updated a lot lately, I think because he's so busy with the various competition shows

01:16:23 ◼   ► that he is a host of on the Food Network, but he makes—his YouTube channel is fun,

01:16:30 ◼   ► he's got a lot of—it's like the second coming of Good Eats in a way, he's got a lot of things

01:16:36 ◼   ► that he makes and explains how he makes various food items on that channel that are pretty

01:16:41 ◼   ► cool, along with some food-related items. You have to watch the videos to see, but they're

01:16:46 ◼   ► Uh, smarter every day is great.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Uh, you may know that guy from the, a lot of people linked to the, the thing

01:16:54 ◼   ► about the bicycle, how, if you reverse the, um, if you reverse the behavior of

01:16:59 ◼   ► a bicycle and how you pedal a bicycle to go forward, it basically everybody

01:17:04 ◼   ► falls off and it takes a long time to unlearn your bicycle riding behavior

01:17:10 ◼   ► that you've, you've, uh, you've stored away and then relearn how to ride a

01:17:13 ◼   ► bicycle the proper way or the this new inverted way that's a the there's some

01:17:19 ◼   ► great videos there and then Phil Plait the bad astronomer has is doing some

01:17:27 ◼   ► videos that are part of this larger series of crash course videos that are

01:17:31 ◼   ► again tied to tied to PBS I believe but he's got a it's called crash course

01:17:36 ◼   ► astronomy and I just enjoy astronomy things so I list that but mostly I just

01:17:43 ◼   ► bounce around and watch what the internet wants me to watch and I don't, you know, even though I

01:17:47 ◼   ► have some YouTube subscriptions I don't necessarily, you know, go to them regularly. A lot of times it's

01:17:53 ◼   ► just what people suggest and I go watch those. I should say in contrast to my kids who absolutely,

01:18:00 ◼   ► if you ask them this question, could list probably 30 YouTubers that they love.

01:18:04 ◼   ► So like what I tend to do when I'm eating lunch or whatever, I open up YouTube and I either watch

01:18:12 ◼   ► a video from somebody that I'm subscribed to. So I subscribe to a bunch of channels just,

01:18:16 ◼   ► and the reason I do this, I don't necessarily watch other videos, is I subscribe to channels that

01:18:21 ◼   ► I've seen videos of that I'm interested in, because then when I go to YouTube's homepage,

01:18:27 ◼   ► it suggests videos to me. And quite a lot of the time I just open up a video and watch it

01:18:32 ◼   ► because it seems interesting. Yeah and I've got like Geek and Sundry which is where the the

01:18:36 ◼   ► the tabletop stuff from Wil Wheaton is, was, is? I don't know.

01:18:42 ◼   ► I can't remember with Geek and Sundry. I've got a bunch of stuff like that in there

01:18:45 ◼   ► too that it's stuff. I actually, I just, it has not crossed the threshold for me where

01:18:51 ◼   ► there's enough new stuff in there that is stuff I really want to watch that I check

01:18:56 ◼   ► my YouTube subscriptions regularly. That hasn't happened so much yet. I would not be surprised

01:19:02 ◼   ► if it did. With that, like, I agree with you, but the

01:19:06 ◼   ► thing is I also know that if I looked and actually went in and found stuff and

01:19:12 ◼   ► was actively trying to find stuff it would become that. I just don't spend

01:19:16 ◼   ► enough time looking. I know that there is lots and lots and lots of stuff in there

01:19:20 ◼   ► that I'm sure I will find fascinating but I just haven't really gone in and

01:19:26 ◼   ► done that work I suppose. Yeah. So there we go. I put a bunch of links to those

01:19:33 ◼   ► YouTube accounts that we've spoken about as well as many other things that we've

01:19:36 ◼   ► spoken about today. If you head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/51 you can

01:19:41 ◼   ► find them or they should be showing up in your podcast app of choice.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Perhaps with chapter marks, who knows? Not today. Too busy for chapter markers today?

01:19:52 ◼   ► Just testing, Jason. If you would like to find us online there's a couple

01:19:59 ◼   ► ways you can do that you can find Jason on Twitter is @jsnelljsnell and he is over at

01:20:04 ◼   ► sixcolors.com and I am I Myke I am Y K E and you can find my shows and other shows that

01:20:13 ◼   ► Jason does as well including Clockwise and Liftoff over at relay.fm. Thanks again to

01:20:19 ◼   ► our sponsors this week the lovely stamps.com Squarespace and GoToMeeting for helping us

01:20:24 ◼   ► out, but most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye Mr Snell.

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