0:00:00*BEEP*
0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 51. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,
0:00:15Build It Beautiful, stampstar.com, postage on demand, and GoToMeeting. Make it easy to
0:00:21meet with your team whenever you need to wherever you are. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined
0:00:26as always by Mr 6 Colors, Jason Snell.
0:00:29Hi Myke, what color am I today?
0:00:32Uh, green.
0:00:33Okay, today's a green day. Good.
0:00:35Good. I have colors for six of the days, and on the seventh day I rest.
0:00:41No color.
0:00:43No color.
0:00:44Have you picked the day?
0:00:46That's transparent.
0:00:48It's on the Sabbath, but for people, for my religion I just made up, the Sabbath is Tuesday.
0:00:56Tuesday.
0:00:57when a lot of Apple announcements happen. Yeah, I'd like to be completely transparent
0:01:03on that day. I have no colour whatsoever. You can't trust me on any other day. Nope.
0:01:08Just Tuesdays. Yes. It's good we record on Monday then I suppose. Yeah it is, it is.
0:01:14How's it going? Yeah, pretty good, pretty good. Start of a brand new week, it's raining
0:01:19here in London. A lot today, even more than usual. But yeah, I'm down from the high of
0:01:26the relay birthday week, it was a great week last week, lots of fun and exciting things
0:01:30happening. If you haven't seen it, I would love it if you would go and read the article
0:01:35that TechCrunch wrote about us, it's a little bit of follow up and follow out. I'll put
0:01:39it in the show notes for this week.
0:01:40Yeah, that's a great article. I actually was kind of embarrassed by it because it's so
0:01:44detailed, I'm like "wow, that's a lot of words that that guy wrote about relay".
0:01:483000.
0:01:49Mmhmm.
0:01:50And did you notice about the part where I said about, and Romain quoted it, about how
0:01:56many people have come to Relay because of your fine self?
0:01:59Yeah I am Relay's rainmaker. It turns out I'm the cool finder, I'm the rainmaker, I'm
0:02:05making it rain right now. On you in London. I should make it rain here in California,
0:02:11we need the rain.
0:02:12Yeah don't give it to me, we've got tons of it. You need it more than I do.
0:02:16I made a horrible mistake. I just got back from a sort of long weekend trip to Spokane,
0:02:23Washington for the World Science Fiction Convention, which more importantly was also a meeting
0:02:28of many incomparable panelists.
0:02:30And we did a couple of podcasts and we did a live incomparable radio drama at the convention
0:02:36and I got to meet some cool people and hang out with a lot of those.
0:02:41So many of my podcast pals are people I don't get to see in person, like almost ever.
0:02:46So that was pretty cool.
0:02:47We got to actually see each other in person.
0:02:50It was very, very cool.
0:02:52>> And we recorded Clockwise. >> We did. Dan Morin and I were in--Clockwise
0:02:57number 100 came out last week, and Dan Morin and I were in the--in a hotel room in Spokane,
0:03:02Washington, recording that. And you and Steven were nice to actually host the shows for us,
0:03:08and so you weren't there, but you were there in spirit.
0:03:11>> I always am. >> Wherever you are, you're there in spirit.
0:03:16>> Wherever you are. >> Wherever I am, yes. You're a--you hover--you
0:03:20You're one of my little Jedi ghosts that urges me on to do good things whenever I'm, I don't
0:03:26know, walking around.
0:03:28So I'm, at the moment, I'm going through a phase of buying an incredible amount of input
0:03:34devices for my Mac.
0:03:37Fits the season.
0:03:38I currently have on my desk, I am not exaggerating, I have three mice, a trackpad, and a Wacom
0:03:45tablet.
0:03:48Are you shopping around or are you, because I know you've got your two-fisted input device
0:03:54method, have you decided that it's more efficient to have three mice and a tablet and you know,
0:04:00and you're driving one with your nose, as you do, because you're a nose toucher.
0:04:04As I am wont to do.
0:04:06I'm putting them through their paces and we spoke about it a bit on Connected last week
0:04:10and on this week's episode of Connected I'm going to talk about a new purchase that I
0:04:15made.
0:04:16I've bought a new mouse which is quite a
0:04:20stupendous piece of equipment. So I was just
0:04:23interested because this is what I'm thinking about right now.
0:04:26What do you use?
0:04:28I have a magic trackpad. I was actually listening to all of the
0:04:32trackpad discussion. This is some more follow out too on
0:04:35ATP. All of their talk about mice and trackpads and
0:04:39tap to click versus actual... I hate tap to click.
0:04:43I know see tap to click is the podcasters friend. Oh, no, it's not no, it's not this podcaster. It's my enemy
0:04:49Oh, I will see it in all its places
0:04:52I am adding things to our show notes right now and complete silence because I'm tapped to clicking
0:04:57But I have Myke do you hear me clicking? Do you hear me clicking right now? It's like thunder in my ears
0:05:02You cannot hear my click my click is of my little magic trackpad is is essentially silent
0:05:10But I used to be a trackball user.
0:05:12For years, I used the trackball.
0:05:15And only a couple of years ago, I'm probably longer than that now, three or four years
0:05:20ago, I switched to the Magic Trackpad because I love the trackpad gestures and I use those
0:05:25all the time.
0:05:26And so when I'm editing podcasts, there was a bug at some point.
0:05:29I don't know whether it was an early version of...
0:05:31It might've been in an early version of El Capitan where at some point, whatever service
0:05:39reads multi-touch crashed in the background.
0:05:44- Ooh, I've had this, I've had this.
0:05:48- So I was in Logic and I was trying to scroll
0:05:50and trying to zoom and I'm like, why is nothing happening?
0:05:54And I had to reboot and then it was fine.
0:05:55But I had that moment of like, wow,
0:05:57I really rely on trackpad gestures to do what I do.
0:06:00And that's why I switched to the trackpad.
0:06:04- I've had it just break in certain scenarios
0:06:07on El Capitan, so like for example I can scroll web pages
0:06:11but can't scroll in the notification center to get the doing stuff
0:06:15but it's really weird. That's even weirder. But yeah that that explains why it wasn't
0:06:19working
0:06:20I didn't put two and two together that I was running the beta. I assume that's what it is
0:06:23is that there's, I mean
0:06:24because apps can lose it but this was like system-wide I just couldn't
0:06:29do gestures anymore. I was like this is really bad because I
0:06:32I do rely on it so that's always been my thing so I don't do tap to click
0:06:36but I do use the Magic Trackpad.
0:06:38That's my input device.
0:06:39I used to use a Kensington trackball
0:06:41for years and years and years,
0:06:42and liked it because I liked the big,
0:06:44as they mentioned on ATP,
0:06:45I like the fact that you can do kind of big gestures
0:06:48to move the, for me mouse use was always,
0:06:52it's super like your hand is tight,
0:06:55your fingers are kind of grasping that mouse,
0:06:57and then you're kind of very carefully moving it around.
0:07:00And what I liked about the trackball
0:07:01is that you can make big gestures,
0:07:03just kind of roll the ball up into the corner
0:07:05and then click and things like that.
0:07:07And I essentially still do that.
0:07:10The habits from those days serve me pretty well
0:07:13with the track pad, 'cause I can still just sort of like
0:07:15flip my finger across the track pad
0:07:16and the cursor goes in the general direction I want it to go.
0:07:20What, okay, so why do you have the graphics tablet
0:07:25since you are not an artist?
0:07:27- Gray uses one and he uses it for audio editing.
0:07:31- I told you to stop hanging out with this guy.
0:07:33He's a bad influence.
0:07:34I know, and he suggested it to me to try and it's surprisingly compelling as a way to do
0:07:44fine audio editing.
0:07:46So I'm trying them all out, because right now I can't decide which of this incredible
0:07:52new mouse that I have, again, no spoilers, and this Wacom tablet and the Magic Trackpad
0:07:58and my Logitech mouse that I have, the MX mouse, between all of these things.
0:08:05Oh, I also use a Magic Mouse.
0:08:08All of these things I'm trying to work out what is the right one for me at the moment.
0:08:13Because I'm trying to do a couple of things.
0:08:14I'm trying to prevent RSI problems, right?
0:08:19That is something I just need to be considerate about, so I'm trying to use the right kind
0:08:23of stuff, good ergonomic stuff.
0:08:25But I'm also trying to find what is the thing that can make me the most efficient with audio editing?
0:08:31So because as well like I use two hands right now, but I would like to not have to do that
0:08:38So I'm trying to also trying to find something that can be replicated wherever I'm working
0:08:44I think the next time I come to London
0:08:47I need to I need to stand over your shoulder and watch you edit something and
0:08:51And you need to take me to whatever secret bunker Gray lives in, or works in, adjacent to wherever secret bunker he lives in,
0:09:01and I need to watch how he edits too, because I'm fascinated. I don't understand how this could possibly work.
0:09:07I'm tempted to actually try and make a video of this at some point.
0:09:12Because I've had a couple of people say, like with this two-handed mode that I have,
0:09:16So I use the trackpad over my left hand for gestures, zooming and panning and stuff like that.
0:09:21And then a mouse in my right hand to do precision editing.
0:09:27And I use the keyboard as well, with keyboard shortcuts.
0:09:30Keyboard gestures, I stroke my keyboard.
0:09:33With your nose eyes.
0:09:34Naturally.
0:09:35And I use a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, right?
0:09:37And between those three things, that's how I use Logic.
0:09:40And this is, to some people, makes perfect sense because they do it themselves.
0:09:44But to other people, they're very puzzled by it.
0:09:48So I'm thinking about maybe at some point trying to make a video of some description
0:09:52to try and highlight exactly what I'm doing here.
0:09:55>> Yeah.
0:09:56Yeah, because it's--I wonder.
0:09:58And the idea of using a--I know people who use a pen input for interface, and they really
0:10:06get into it.
0:10:08But I don't know.
0:10:09I just I have a hard time conceiving of editing audio that way but you know maybe so.
0:10:15I've created my own crazy way of doing audio editing in order to get to be as fast as I
0:10:20can in Logic but I just have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the trackpad just
0:10:26like I do when I'm using my computer for everything else and you know I've got keyboard shortcuts
0:10:32and I've got you know pointing and panning and zooming all happening with the one trackpad.
0:10:38That's why they make all these different pointing devices, I guess, is that everybody can come
0:10:42up with their own thing that works for them.
0:10:43But it's just funny, I have a hard time even conceiving how you do it.
0:10:48So I would love to see, yeah, I'd love to see a video or something.
0:10:50Maybe I should work on that.
0:10:52Should we do some follow-up?
0:10:53We'll start off with some follow-up on Myke and the Movies last week.
0:10:57So War Games follow-up.
0:10:59So there will be some very light spoilers for this 80s movie.
0:11:03Would you like to go ahead and explain the follow-up we received?
0:11:07Sure.
0:11:08talked a lot about like why do they come toward the end of the movie just right
0:11:11into the last at the beginning of the last act of the movie when the kids are
0:11:15on the beach and they're and they've decided the world's gonna end and
0:11:18they're kissing and it's just gonna be this nice romantic moment at the end of
0:11:21the world and then there's bright lights and a helicopter and like what is going
0:11:25on in that scene and you know we talked about did the army come for them but
0:11:30Falcon but Falcon is there but there's like an army or NORAD or something
0:11:34there's like lightning bolt symbol on the side, fake probably, on the side of the helicopter.
0:11:40So it's a military helicopter, but Falcon is there. So we're wondering sort of like,
0:11:44and it's never really explained. And then they're rushed to NORAD and they go in through
0:11:49that big vault door that will crush them if they don't just sort of sneak in there. So
0:11:53Nolan wrote in and said, "It seems to me that Professor Falcon has come to his senses, calls
0:11:58NORAD," so he was convinced sort of by the kid's argument, "calls NORAD and has enough
0:12:02heavy pull with them to get the kids and get a helicopter and go save the world. And McKittrick,
0:12:10Debbie Coleman, doesn't know anything about it, so there's no way he found them to get
0:12:13them and isn't he surprised to see Falcon when they arrive. So that's his suggestion,
0:12:18Nolan's suggestion is that Falcon is somehow involved in this. I think that's valid. I
0:12:23think it's also valid that in this moment where it looks like they're going to Defcon
0:12:29that they might pick Falcon up from his retirement and call him into action for this just in
0:12:38case they need him at the end of the world and he picks up the kids. But it's not ever
0:12:43clear, but it is true that Falcon seems to be potentially more complicit in what happens
0:12:49than I was giving him credit for.
0:12:52My headcanon is that Falcon made a telephone call.
0:12:56Yeah, it could be. When they get to when they get to Norad, he still doesn't seem entirely
0:13:01convinced, but it may just be that he's decided he wants, it may be that he's decided he wants
0:13:06to see it. He wants to see the end of the world. He wants to either get more information
0:13:10or just watch while the world burns. That may be what he's doing there because he still
0:13:15seems to need convincing at the end, although that may also be part of his thing with Matthew
0:13:19Broderick where he's basically, he sees himself in the kid and he wants the kid to work it
0:13:25out. He started this, if the kid can work it out, then the kid can solve it. And so
0:13:30maybe it's that he's not really undecided so much as he wants to guide Matthew Broderick
0:13:37to do it instead. I don't know. I have to watch it again.
0:13:40Let's do that. Let's take a break and we'll watch the movie.
0:13:43We'll let you know what we think. Kevin wrote in and pointed out, and this is, I will stand
0:13:50by the fact that it's totally insane that there is a school group touring the headquarters
0:13:54of America's nuclear missile arsenal. However, according to listener Kevin, until 1999, you
0:14:04could call up and say, "I'd like a tour of NORAD," and they would give you a tour of
0:14:09NORAD. That's crazy. But there you go. He sent us a link to an article about how the
0:14:18tours were curtailed in 1999 and I wonder if after 9/11 if they if they
0:14:25stopped them altogether that I don't know but in the eight in the 80s in the
0:14:2980s you could take a tour of NORAD. So I don't know if you know the answer to
0:14:33this but I just thought of it was the movie filmed there? I don't I don't think
0:14:38so I think they built a giant set in fact I think there are some articles
0:14:41about famously about this this huge set that they built for John Saracusa talks
0:14:46about that a little bit in the Incomparable episode about it. It's a spectacular, huge
0:14:51control room set that they've got.
0:14:53Right, because I mean the outside shots though, I mean...
0:14:57Yeah, I think so, although I mean there are lots of establishing shots that are, you know,
0:15:01the Cheyenne Mountain complex, the Stargate, the TV show uses those because that's where
0:15:07it's set. The whole secret, you know, not even secret, government base inside a mountain
0:15:12is a, you know, that's a real thing and a movie and TV trope, but I don't know if that
0:15:19footage is from there or not, it might be. But they've got some action stuff, you know,
0:15:22where they're trying to get inside the gates and all of that, and you know, I'm pretty
0:15:25sure there's not a bank vault door on the entrance, although maybe. They just use that
0:15:31door. They use that door a lot. Well, it might not look like that. The door in War Games
0:15:34looks like it's from a bank vault. Like from a bank vault set, right? It doesn't look to
0:15:39me like that would be something that the actual facility would use. It would probably use
0:15:44something a lot less interesting looking than a shiny bank vault.
0:15:47Yeah, they probably shot that part in a bank or something like that.
0:15:51Yeah, or they've got a bank vault set somewhere, you know, in some movie studio lot that they
0:15:57used. I don't know. Anyway, that was good feedback and I heard from a lot of people.
0:16:02We got a lot of nice mentions on Twitter from people who were excited that we talked about
0:16:05War Games because it definitely, especially people of a more nerdy persuasion of a certain
0:16:10age, and this includes me, it holds a special place in our hearts. And like I said, this
0:16:16would not make my top ten films, favorite films list like some of the movies we watched
0:16:21on this show, but it still holds a special place in my heart because it was, you know,
0:16:26anybody who was into computers in the early 80s, this was the movie that spoke to us.
0:16:32for the first time like that's that's somebody like us and he almost destroyed the world.
0:16:39We still have some more follow up to get to but let me take our first break for this week's
0:16:42episode and thank our friends over at GoToMeeting from Citrix for sponsoring this week's show.
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0:17:06I know that's definitely something that happens in England.
0:17:08It's a lot of hassle.
0:17:10You have to do all this stuff, you have to get all this stuff set up.
0:17:13Just coordinating calendars with people is an absolute disaster and a mess because people
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0:19:29of times, especially when I was late for meetings. You want their special product
0:19:35late to meeting. I'll pitch them on that one, it's a good idea. So I see something
0:19:43here that excites me, Jason. A link from Six Colors in our show notes here.
0:19:48>> But with the title on those, the pen is mightier than the keyboard.
0:19:53>> Yes.
0:19:54>> What do we have here?
0:19:57>> Well, I don't believe it.
0:20:00Don't believe it, it's not true.
0:20:01But there's a really interesting story that I linked to that ran on KQED, which is the
0:20:08local public broadcaster here in the San Francisco area, actually, talking about a study published
0:20:17in the journal Psychological Science, where they did tests about people taking notes in
0:20:22the classroom, students taking notes by writing them down on paper or by using a computer.
0:20:30And what they found, first round they found is that people tended to write verbatim what
0:20:34was being said when they did it, they were transcribing on the computer. Whereas on a
0:20:38piece of paper, you can't write that fast, nobody can write that fast. So they were doing
0:20:43summaries they were trying to boil things down. And for a long time people have felt,
0:20:49and there have been studies I believe, to show this, that the act of processing what
0:20:55you've heard and boiling it down into something in your notes helps you to remember it. In
0:21:00fact I can think of a slogan that reflects that.
0:21:06My favorite paper manufacturer, Field Notes, I love my Field Notes notebooks, and they
0:21:11said, they say, their slogan is "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing
0:21:16it down to remember it now."
0:21:18And I think that really does come from a place, like I know that's the way I feel.
0:21:21I am a big pen and paper guy, I think a lot of people know this.
0:21:24And when I write things down, when I take notes, I feel like it engages other parts
0:21:29of my brain and it helps me process the information in a better way.
0:21:34And I think that I'm able to do faster on pen and paper things like make emphasis on
0:21:40something in an interesting way. So I can circle it and I can put an exclamation mark
0:21:45next to it, which is more difficult for me anyway to do something like that on a computer.
0:21:50I can change the color of it but it doesn't feel right. It doesn't have that tactile feel
0:21:55of circling it twice and underlining it and drawing a little arrow that comes out the
0:22:00side. You can do all of this stuff in apps like Omnigraffle but it takes longer to do.
0:22:06to draw the circles and draw the arrows and there isn't that visceral feeling about it anyway for me like there is with
0:22:14pen and paper, which is why I continue to be very excited about the idea of an iPad with a stylus.
0:22:20So what these um
0:22:23and 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
0:22:28circling things and drawing things. They encourage people in this study to doodle as well, which I believe improved
0:22:34I think one of the groups was encouraged to doodle and doodling improved recollection,
0:22:39which is also interesting. Talk about engaging other parts of your brain. You're engaging
0:22:43outside the language centers, right? Arrows and circles and little smiley faces and stick
0:22:48figures and things like that are coming from a different place than the language centers,
0:22:54than generating the words. And certainly they're coming from a different place than things
0:22:59passing through your ears to your fingers in a transcript where you may not have any
0:23:05real recollection of what's being said, you're just trying to get a string of words down,
0:23:09which is a problem. Anyway, in the study they then went back and told the people on the
0:23:13-- another group on the computers to not do verbatim transcription and instead think about
0:23:20and try to summarize and the note takers still did better. And they had the verbatim note
0:23:30takers study their transcripts that they had written and then come back the next day and
0:23:36the note takers still did better. So the suggestion, and there's more studying to do, they want
0:23:42to do more on this, but the suggestion here is that perhaps just the act of writing with
0:23:49pen on paper and listening to somebody what somebody is saying is going to be more effective
0:23:53as a learning tool than bringing in a computer and that this was all with a laptop bringing
0:23:59in a computer and typing in your notes and I can totally see that I totally I can totally
0:24:06see that I have always been a even when I take notes on on a computer I'm in a summarizer
0:24:11but I'm a much worse note taker on the computer than I am on a piece of paper it is it is
0:24:16Here it is, even me and my hatred of paper and pens,
0:24:20admitting that I think they're a better note-taking medium
0:24:23in general for that.
0:24:25And all of my handwriting is terrible.
0:24:27I can usually recognize it at least soon after I've written.
0:24:32Don't show me something I wrote a year ago
0:24:34without any context.
0:24:35I won't have any idea what I said,
0:24:36but I can do it for the near term.
0:24:40I am curious about how this might be different
0:24:42if you use like a tablet with a stylus,
0:24:45like you said for this rumored iPad Pro,
0:24:47would that be essentially you're writing in ink
0:24:49so it doesn't matter
0:24:51and it would have the same impact on your brain?
0:24:54And then, so that I'm curious about,
0:24:57I don't know, I also wondered,
0:25:01I wrote a piece for Macworld a couple of years ago
0:25:03about writing articles on an iPad
0:25:05using the software keyboard,
0:25:06just very slowly tapping away on an iPad on its screen.
0:25:09So not being able to type my 120 words a minute,
0:25:12but much slower and how the writing, my writing style was different when I did that.
0:25:18Because I think, again, I was engaging some different parts of my brain and I was also slowing myself down.
0:25:24So I had to more carefully consider every letter and every word and the sentence construction.
0:25:29I couldn't just zip past that sentence to the next one. I had to get it all down.
0:25:34And as a result, I thought about it in a different way.
0:25:39And I wonder if that is also something that would be similar here, that if you were just
0:25:44typing it in on your phone or your iPad, would you do a better job because you're forced
0:25:49to summarize because you just couldn't get it all down otherwise?
0:25:51That I don't know.
0:25:52I'm curious.
0:25:53But I thought it was cool and it was pen-related, so I wanted to bring it up for you too.
0:25:56You know it's going to make me happy.
0:25:58I did.
0:25:59I did.
0:26:00But yeah, I don't—it seems totally reasonable to me that that would be true.
0:26:06And probably people who, you know, students are told, "Bring your laptop to class and
0:26:10take notes."
0:26:13I would hope that this kind of research would lead people in education to suggest to, you
0:26:19know, keep the laptops closed.
0:26:20Plus they're a distraction, but keep the laptops closed and, you know, get out your pen and
0:26:26take notes during class.
0:26:29Because that's probably the most effective way to remember what you're being taught.
0:26:34So I want to just do one last piece of follow-up for this week, which is a recommendation that
0:26:41Matthew Pansarino made on the last episode of the talk show with Jon Gruber about the
0:26:45Magic Rex Twitter account.
0:26:47Are you familiar with this?
0:26:48Do you know what this is?
0:26:49Yeah, I've been using it for a while.
0:26:52So it's a Twitter account that you follow.
0:26:55It's @MagicRex, R-E-C-S, and it DMs you every now and then with a recommendation of somebody
0:27:02you should follow or a tweet that you should look for. So I've been following it for a
0:27:07few weeks now and I'm happy to say that I really like it. It works really well and I
0:27:13have, basically what it does is it's maybe every few days I think it's been happening
0:27:17for me, it will send me a DM and be like "Jason, John and Casey but all followed this person"
0:27:25and it gives you a link to their account and you can just go look at them or three people
0:27:30you know, follow, favorited this tweet
0:27:32in the last seven seconds.
0:27:33- Right.
0:27:34- So that tends to be what it's unearthing
0:27:36is interesting people to follow that I don't know
0:27:39or maybe should know.
0:27:42And also it's highlighting to me tweets
0:27:45that people think are important,
0:27:46which tend to be either big news stories
0:27:49or things to congratulate someone on.
0:27:51- Yep, that's accurate.
0:27:53- But it's helping me find,
0:27:55like all of the things that it's suggested to me so far
0:27:58was stuff I didn't know about. So I think it's fantastic.
0:28:02Yeah, so it's run by Twitter and so it's used, it is attached to the Twitter
0:28:06internals and it's individualized for you
0:28:10and it's fast. So for example I'm looking here
0:28:15I got a note yesterday
0:28:18that Christina Warren, Casey List, John Syracuse,
0:28:22Daniel Jalkud and one more, because it ran out of space,
0:28:26followed Tanya Latner, who is the new president of the LLVM foundation, which was just created,
0:28:34right? Well, we follow a lot of the same people. So that was like, here is an interesting person.
0:28:39And a lot of times I ended up following those people. And then a few days ago, I got one that
0:28:43was a tweet by Dan Morin, was just favorited by David Lore, Tony Sindelar, and Paul Weimer,
0:28:50who's another science fiction podcaster. And that was Dan's tweet with pictures of us recording the
0:28:56the live and comparable in Spokane. So as it was going on, not only did Dan post pictures
0:29:01without me knowing, but I got a direct message sent to me from Magic Rex saying, "People
0:29:06like this," which was also cool. So, and then I'll just share one more, which is Tiffany
0:29:12Arment's tweet of the people at the museum sitting on the benches and its three older
0:29:16ladies and Marco. That one got favorited by a lot of people really fast. So yeah, Magic
0:29:22Rex is great. It's not, I wouldn't say it's spotty enough that, you know, it feels to
0:29:29be like a good technology demonstration of the power that Twitter has, speaking of our
0:29:33past episodes, the power that Twitter has to do some amazing things with their data.
0:29:38And I wish that it was more customizable and it could happen more often and I could see
0:29:42it in more places than just what Magic Rex spits out every couple of days. But it's great
0:29:50for what it is. I just I wish I think it's a good example of how powerful
0:29:54features are that they could build internally at Twitter and make
0:29:58the service that much more useful. So they mentioned it on the show and it
0:30:04kind of makes sense that this technology is powering a lot of the recommendation
0:30:12stuff that Twitter does in the official app but the thing that makes this
0:30:15different is this is highlighting maybe the most pertinent things rather than
0:30:20because it's a permanent fixture in the Twitter app it's not always that useful
0:30:25yeah yeah this is um yeah it's I mean what I love about it is how personal it
0:30:33is it is based on who you know and then from that it's floating things out just
0:30:39like nuzzle does a great job with news because it's based on who you know and
0:30:42so everybody's magic wrecks are gonna be different but it's bubbling under the
0:30:45surface of Twitter and they're they're using it in a few places and this is
0:30:48what we've heard is that you know there are things going on on Twitter to use
0:30:52this stuff even more and it's great yeah I recommend that people follow it because
0:30:55it's not gonna be sort of like you know Oprah is tweeting about things right
0:31:00it's not that unless you love Oprah and follow Oprah and a bunch of things like
0:31:03that it's gonna be these really targeted at the people that you follow and who
0:31:08follow you. So top tip. Good one good tip. False Touch. Talk a bit about
0:31:15Force 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.
0:31:21So 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.
0:31:35because you end up with something like Retina or something like that.
0:31:40This Force Touch will end up being the thing. Retina, Siri, that type of stuff.
0:31:45So what are your feelings about Force Touch on bigger platforms,
0:31:50like the iPad and the iPhone, so these big screens that we have?
0:31:55Oh, it is, you're right, it is funny, this is the, this is like the feature that keeps
0:32:04creeping, and so we're all just sort of speculating that it will continue to creep across the
0:32:11product line, even though we've only seen it in the Apple Watch and in the new Macbooks
0:32:16and MacBook Pros, right?
0:32:18Yep.
0:32:19Yeah, I wrote an article which I think is not out yet for Tom's guide about this for
0:32:24my good pal Philip Michaels who works over there now.
0:32:27And he asked me to write about like sort of like
0:32:28how it will change how we use our phones.
0:32:31And it's an interesting question because
0:32:33if I can back up for a second,
0:32:34on the Apple Watch, it's like a necessary
0:32:41added dimension of functionality.
0:32:44Like you, there are things that you can only do
0:32:46by force touching on the Apple Watch.
0:32:48Like you can't, I don't believe you can like
0:32:52get into the watch face editing mode without a force touch on the watch face and then it brings
0:32:58up the customization mode. So there and like if you're like in the workout app if you want to end
0:33:04the workout you force touch and then press end workout that's how it works but on the mac it's a
0:33:11like a another it's not even a right click it's a it's that three finger tap essentially in most
0:33:17cases they can apps can modify it to be other things but it's the three-finger
0:33:22tap which is kind of weird it's like you know define this term or open quick look
0:33:27which you can also do with the spacebar which is right there and I think that's
0:33:33I so I think even though developers can do things with it they also can't in
0:33:38most cases they can't require it because it's only on a couple of models and when
0:33:42I think about how you apply that to iOS to the iPhone and potentially to the
0:33:46iPad as well, I start to feel like it's going to be like the Mac that, um, yeah,
0:33:53maybe there will be a way for developers to detect, uh, and change their
0:33:58interfaces based on whether a device has forced touch or not maybe, but are any
0:34:03developers going to really go through the effort of having sort of two, two
0:34:06versions of their, of, of their apps, interface and appearance based on
0:34:10whether something's got forced touch or not, or is it more going to be
0:34:13shortcuts. And that's my gut feeling is, and I do think 9to5Mac did a story that said,
0:34:19you know, shortcuts is sort of what is anticipated for that feature. And that seems right because
0:34:24you can't, it seems unlikely that it will be mandatory features. It may be that you
0:34:29can force touch on an empty part of your launcher screen, you know, the springboard, and it'll
0:34:35say, you know, would you like to change the wallpaper or something like that? That might
0:34:38happen and certainly there was the 9 to 5 Mac I believe rumor story about how you might
0:34:44be able to force touch on a location in maps and have it jump to directions from your current
0:34:50location to that location. Things like that, shortcuts right? Which that's nice, that's
0:34:54a good feature. But given that it's only going to be on these brand new phones if the rumors
0:35:01are true and brand new devices you can't you just can't make them make it a mandatory
0:35:08gesture plus on top of that and I think we see this with the Apple watch right now is
0:35:15it's not really discoverable you can discover it by accident but you know you basically
0:35:19need to be told in a little you know getting started guide or something you have to say
0:35:24you know you need to push hard to on the on the screen and then it tells you things and
0:35:28then you can do things with those things. You have to explain it. Oh, if I push harder
0:35:32something happens here and that's harder to communicate to people and a lot of people
0:35:37won't get it and they won't get the differences. So I think it's problematic. I think it starts
0:35:42to feel to me like it's kind of a power user feature and I'm not sure, you know, I'm sure
0:35:49there'll be a great demo of something just like the QuickTime, that weird QuickTime thing
0:35:53with where you kept pressing harder on the trackpad on the MacBook and the video played
0:35:59faster. That was kind of a cool looking demo but it's completely useless.
0:36:03Yeah, that's one of those things it's like it's for the one person who needs it, great,
0:36:08but who actually really needs to do that like very often so much so that it's like this
0:36:13is a marquee feature of this technology.
0:36:16Right. Then again, I don't want to draw the MacBook parallel too far because on a MacBook
0:36:23or a Mac in general, you've got keys and you've got a click and a right click and
0:36:29modifier keys and all of these different interaction methods.
0:36:34And on the phone, you don't, right?
0:36:37On the phone, you don't.
0:36:38On the phone, it's touch.
0:36:39So you can tap, you can tap and hold, you can do multi-touch, but you know, you can't
0:36:45hold down a couple of keyboard, a couple of keys and click in order to get something special
0:36:50to happen on an iPhone because those things aren't there.
0:36:55>> MATT PATTERSON We were talking a little bit last week about
0:36:58the complexity of these devices.
0:37:01Isn't that a good thing that you can't do that?
0:37:03>> BRIAN KARDELL I think it's a good thing, but I think that
0:37:05there are probably cases where I don't think those kinds of gestures are for everybody,
0:37:12but I think it's nice to have them for the people who want to use them as long as they
0:37:17don't get in the way of the other people.
0:37:19So as theoretically a power user, I look at that ability to have an extra dimension in
0:37:28my gestures and in my usage of that touchscreen device and I think, "Well, that's great.
0:37:34I can learn this.
0:37:35I can get over the learning curve here and I'm going to be way more efficient and powerful
0:37:38with what I'm doing on these devices."
0:37:40That's great, but there are a lot of open questions there, right?
0:37:46this going to get in people's way? And how do you market a power user feature for a product
0:37:53that is very, you know, has even fewer power users by percentage than the computer does,
0:38:00right? Because smartphones are even more a real person device, a regular user device
0:38:06than computers are, I think. I feel like, you know, maybe I'm wrong with that, but I
0:38:10feel like this is a simpler device that people expect even less to need to learn how to do
0:38:16all the crazy power user features of. So, you know, that's my concern here is, you know,
0:38:23just think, I mean, Myke, think about this. How many people are going to say, "Oh, God,
0:38:27why did this thing happen when I tapped on my iPhone?" And the answer is, "Oh, well,
0:38:30you tapped a little too hard. You pushed a little too hard."
0:38:33Oh, man, I just realized what's going to happen if my mom gets one of these.
0:38:36She's just going to push everything hard, just force touch everything?
0:38:40Well, I just I feel like she would do it, right? Enough accidentally that she's gonna feel like
0:38:47she's breaking stuff. Like things... it's gonna... basically what will happen is for the idea of many
0:38:54people, like the idea of touching the screen performs an action and when that starts to
0:39:00what seemingly appears to be sporadically performing different actions, that adds a layer
0:39:06of complexity right so for as long maybe for the last three years my mom has used
0:39:11an iPhone and she's actually using it now to like use the internet and buy
0:39:15things online and stuff like that so she is now feeling comfortable with this
0:39:19device but now if she starts every every now and then she presses it and a menu
0:39:25pops up that she's never seen before like that's gonna I mean I know this is
0:39:29really taking it far but like I'm using this as an example knowing her as I do
0:39:34do that she would be, she would start to feel less confident with it again, because things
0:39:39are happening that she doesn't understand that are new.
0:39:42And these are the challenges that Apple, I mean, as we've said so many times on the show,
0:39:46I'm sure this conversation has been had. If they are putting Force Touch into these devices,
0:39:52these conversations have been had by the people who are building these products, right? Like,
0:39:55how do we do this in a way that it doesn't get in the way of people who don't understand
0:39:59what's going on, but gives us some advantage, gives some users, some percentage of users,
0:40:05some advantages by using this. How do we make it understandable, not get in people's way,
0:40:11not confuse people. And my point here is that this is a tricky one to me. It strikes me
0:40:17that this is a little bit of a challenge to do this. And maybe the Force Touch stuff,
0:40:24it's in the iPhone will be very very specific and it's going to have a haptic
0:40:28feedback so you're going to be able to really tell that it's a
0:40:32very different thing than a tap but it's still going to be a challenge if you
0:40:38want it to be accidentally triggered as little as possible but you also need
0:40:43people it to be triggered properly when people want to trigger it and you need
0:40:47to find a way to explain to people that they can trigger it because they're
0:40:51they're probably not going to, you know, unless you make it really easy to click by mistake,
0:40:59Force Touch by mistake, it's going to be hard to find. It's not going to be discoverable.
0:41:03So it's a real challenge. And not every device has it. That's the other thing, right? So
0:41:08you can't just say, "Well, the good news is we can just assume that every single one of
0:41:12these..." With the Apple Watch, every device has Force Touch, right? Every single Apple
0:41:16Watch will have Force Touch. It's just, you can assume that it's going to be there, but
0:41:21not going to be able to do that on iOS for years and years, if ever.
0:41:28Well, we'll see. I actually have some stuff, I have some different examples that I want
0:41:33to bring up about this. One that goes into the Android world. But before we do that,
0:41:39let me take a break and thank our second sponsor for this week and that is Squarespace. You
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0:44:52today. Squarespace, Buddha beautiful. So I want to talk about something I think is quite interesting
0:44:58about a potential use for false touch borrowing something that I've seen on Android. So there is a
0:45:04launcher called Action Launcher and I've used them before and they were actually a previous sponsor
0:45:10on material, right? Our Android show, a Google show on Relay FM. And one of the things...
0:45:16It sounds exciting.
0:45:17It is. It's full of action.
0:45:18Action launcher.
0:45:19So I'll tell you what I like about it. So for people that don't know, you can install
0:45:23what's called a launcher into Android, which basically is a kind of replacement for your
0:45:29home screen. So a lot of them have specific functions and stuff that they can give you.
0:45:34And one of the things that I like about Action Launcher is you can set these
0:45:37shortcuts that you can have on folders or on apps.
0:45:42So what you would do is if you have an icon
0:45:45and instead of tapping the icon, you swipe on the icon,
0:45:48it would give you an action that you can predefine
0:45:52or would do something.
0:45:53So let's say for example, you had the phone icon, right?
0:45:57You could set that every time you swipe on the phone icon,
0:46:00it will call a specific person that you require.
0:46:03Or you have a folder, right?
0:46:05You have your photo folder.
0:46:06and you can tap on the folder and you can open the camera or the photos app or a photo editing app
0:46:11but if you swipe on the photos folder you can program it to open the camera and take a picture immediately
0:46:17so you can you can customize these and give actions to icons and folders by swiping or tapping
0:46:24and you can predefine them
0:46:26that's the type of stuff I'd like to see false touch do, right?
0:46:28so it's like I have my tweetbot icon
0:46:31If I just force touch on a tweetbot icon, it opens it immediately to the new tweet field or something like that.
0:46:38So this is the type of stuff that I think would be really cool to do,
0:46:42but I don't see Apple doing this type of stuff because of the amount of boxes and ticks and user customization.
0:46:48Mm-hmm. So that's the sort of thing that I would like to see.
0:46:54And where I see there could be utility in something like this,
0:46:57But I'm just not sure if I would if I can envision a world where Apple is letting you do that type of tinkering
0:47:04Yeah, I mean
0:47:06Right Apple is gonna fight against the fiddly bits
0:47:11They're always going to fight against them that was almost English the fiddly bits. Mm-hmm
0:47:16I'm also trying to comprehend how you swipe on an icon
0:47:22So you just swipe aren't they small?
0:47:24Well, yeah, but instead of so like your finger so you sort of touch it and then slide
0:47:29Yeah, you just swipe right so you touch and slide up so it doesn't register the when you move away
0:47:35Right. All right touch. So you put your finger on the icon and then flick basically, right?
0:47:40I guess that you're saying yeah, but you don't need to be that precise about it, right?
0:47:44You just swipe in that part of the screen and it recognizes it
0:47:47It may be sad. Oh, it maybe sounds complex, but it's it really is very it was like playing a game
0:47:53right? When you play a game you swipe on certain parts of the screen to make
0:47:56things happen. Yeah. Like it's the same kind of idea. Okay, all right, I believe
0:48:02you. Maybe. I could think of some things like Apple could, because one of the
0:48:09fascinating things about this is we've had developers about all summer to work
0:48:13on iOS 9 stuff, right? But there's gonna be things in new iPhones potentially
0:48:17that are, that they're gonna have access to, but they're not gonna know about them
0:48:23until the phone comes out, which is, it's understandable,
0:48:28but it's frustrating, right?
0:48:29It's like, you know, here's all these cool things
0:48:32that you can spend all summer building.
0:48:34Oh, and here's a brand new feature
0:48:35in our most popular product that you get no time to,
0:48:38you get no warning.
0:48:39It'll be out in a week and a half.
0:48:41Good luck.
0:48:42But they could like offer app developers
0:48:46the ability to build shortcuts,
0:48:49you know, shortcuts in on a force touch,
0:48:52on the icon in the launcher screen.
0:48:54And the question is, is that a single action?
0:48:58You know, you can decide what the Force Touch does,
0:49:03or could it bring up, you know,
0:49:05could it bring up an options menu right there,
0:49:08or would it, you know, or would it launch the app,
0:49:10and then the app could choose to bring up an options menu?
0:49:13I feel like that's the kind of thing
0:49:16that Apple would probably do.
0:49:17Is they'd keep it simple like that.
0:49:21Like, you know, and that would be a nice,
0:49:24that would be better than not offering it right.
0:49:26The ability to force touch on an icon in the home screen
0:49:31would be better than not offering it.
0:49:34And then they could just say,
0:49:35"And then you figure out what to do with it."
0:49:37You'll know whether your app was brought to the foreground
0:49:40by a force touch or not,
0:49:41and you can decide to do something with that.
0:49:45And it could be as simple as like, you know,
0:49:48I don't even know what,
0:49:49something that jumps you immediately into the action,
0:49:51like the Netflix app just starts playing,
0:49:54it leaves off, or like the videos app,
0:49:56knows that you have something paused
0:49:58that you went away from a while ago
0:50:00and you force touch on it and it just starts playing it.
0:50:02It doesn't ask you, it doesn't have you tap the play bar,
0:50:05it just plays.
0:50:06Maybe stuff like that.
0:50:08And then somebody else might bring up a menu and say,
0:50:11"Oh, what would you like?"
0:50:13Especially for some automation stuff,
0:50:15that actually might be kind of cool.
0:50:17But it would probably be punted to the app itself, right?
0:50:22Rather than Apple giving some new user interface element
0:50:26in the launch screen to let you make decisions.
0:50:29Although that would be cool too if they did it,
0:50:30but it doesn't seem like them, does it?
0:50:33- No, I mean, it does definitely make sense in the idea
0:50:36that you could, that the developer would decide.
0:50:38Or maybe, I don't know, maybe it's something
0:50:43you could enable in app setting, I don't know.
0:50:45This is the thing, right? This is the battle between features and complexity, and it's
0:50:52where feature creep, right? The idea is things just become more and more complex over time,
0:50:58but they kind of have to because there has to be reasons that the products, you know,
0:51:06there needs to be a reason that we want to buy the 6+S.
0:51:09Well, I mean, this is it, right? This is one of the things Apple struggles with, and I
0:51:14when we have these conversations because I do think that these are the conversations
0:51:18that happen inside Apple all the time and that a lot of people who follow this stuff
0:51:22don't think about.
0:51:24Like they don't think that these things happen.
0:51:25You know, "Well, it's obvious they should do this."
0:51:28It's like, "Yeah, but then once you start to pick at it, it's much more complicated
0:51:33than all of that."
0:51:35Do...
0:51:36Okay, just to get idealistic for a minute, introducing new features just so you've got
0:51:41something to flog with the new version of your device is not a good enough reason to
0:51:46do it. It's not. It's not a good enough reason to add a new feature just so that you've got
0:51:50something to sell. I know realistically you need to do that because you want to sell products
0:51:57and saying, "Well, this phone is a little bit faster than the last phone." You know,
0:52:01people don't really care. You want to find something that you can demo and you can promote
0:52:05really well and say, "Look how awful," or, "Look how awesome this is." Not awful. "Look
0:52:10Look how awful this other product is. Ha ha! But our product is beautiful. You've got to
0:52:16do that. That's the real world. But that's how companies get in trouble, I think. It's
0:52:21saying, "Yeah, we got this crap. It's not really very good, but we got to sell it, because,
0:52:25you know, how else? Otherwise, we got no new product." And yeah, that's the danger here.
0:52:30I think with this kind of stuff, you maybe see it with a lot of Android phones, because
0:52:36market is more competitive there, right? Because you have the iPhone and then for
0:52:40many, I think maybe not Samsung but everybody else, it's all the Android
0:52:44phones, right? I think Samsung at this point have established themselves in the
0:52:49general mindset as a brand, right? That have their own thing. Although they are
0:52:54not impervious to doing this themselves. Like, seemingly adding features for the
0:52:58sake of adding a feature without a lot of the thought that needs to go into it.
0:53:03Like so for example, when fingerprint scanners
0:53:06came onto other phones, they seemed to be
0:53:09just not very good.
0:53:10And now, like if you look at all of the phones
0:53:13coming out now, the fingerprint scanners
0:53:16seem to be as good as the iPhone.
0:53:18Like they seem to work quickly and you just touch them.
0:53:22Like for example, I think it's when Samsung
0:53:24first put their fingerprint scanner in,
0:53:26you had to swipe your thumb on the home button.
0:53:28But now you just--
0:53:29- Yeah, you had to move it down like it was a,
0:53:31like you need to slide it across
0:53:34so it could scan the whole fingerprint.
0:53:36And now you just hold it down
0:53:38like you would on an iPhone.
0:53:41- So like that's the difference, right?
0:53:42It's in, we have to add something,
0:53:44so we'll add a subpar version of something
0:53:47to get it out there.
0:53:48Apple again, they also,
0:53:50there are obviously times
0:53:52where they would make compromises, right?
0:53:55They are not like perfect.
0:53:57They will do things, I'm sure,
0:53:59that are more akin to this,
0:54:01but at least try and do it in the best way
0:54:03that they possibly can.
0:54:05Because I don't want to paint them as the perfect company
0:54:07'cause they definitely aren't with this sort of stuff.
0:54:09And there will be a pull or a push from the marketing team
0:54:13to be like, you need to give us a feature.
0:54:16There has to be a feature to sell.
0:54:19Like there just has to be, right?
0:54:21You can't just say, oh, the 6S is just faster?
0:54:26Like, 'cause that doesn't work, right?
0:54:28It is faster and they always make a point of that,
0:54:30But there always has been the thing, right?
0:54:33So the 3GS had video recording, didn't it?
0:54:36And then the 4S had Siri.
0:54:38And that's as far as my--
0:54:42- They always, there's always something,
0:54:45there's always a marketing feature.
0:54:47And the 3GS had an S for speed, if you remember.
0:54:54And maybe one of the things we've seen
0:54:59Apple and new features is that they are restrained sometimes in what they do, especially with
0:55:05the first iteration of a feature. Like NFC, people are talking for ages about NFC. When's
0:55:10NFC going to come to iOS? Oh, you've got an NFC chip in Android, you can do all this crazy
0:55:13stuff with it, you can scan little cards and automatically log into the Wi-Fi and all that.
0:55:18And when Apple did NFC, what did they do? They said, "It's for payments. It's only for
0:55:24payments. Nobody gets to control it and in this first version it's you know it's completely
0:55:29locked down where nobody has access to it except the system. And that that was it right.
0:55:37I would like to think that at some point Apple might open that up but they may never open
0:55:43it up. They might say look the only application we see for this technology is payments and
0:55:47And that's it. We're done. That's it. So with something like Force Touch, we may see Apple,
0:55:54part of what Apple's doing is telling the story. It's to sell the product. They will
0:55:57tell a story and the story may be a good story or we may look at it and say, "Oh, that's
0:56:01kind of weak. Do people really want that? Will it really work like that?" That's part
0:56:05of the skepticism that goes into, people talk about that reality distortion field, but you
0:56:10know, and when you're sitting there as a journalist, you have those moments of like, "Eh, I mean,
0:56:16You fit that in too, and you're like, "I don't see if this is a good example."
0:56:19I don't know if people would use that.
0:56:21That's part of the set of questions when you haven't used the product yourself and you're
0:56:24just listening to what they're saying.
0:56:25Do you buy their story?
0:56:26Does that story make sense?
0:56:27Is that a story that's going to appeal to consumers?
0:56:30Are they going to be able to make good on what they promise?
0:56:32Apple's generally, generally good at that.
0:56:35Not perfect, but generally good at that.
0:56:37So maybe Force Touch is going to have a very specific story, a very specific set of uses,
0:56:43And the developer story may be extremely limited.
0:56:46Or the developer story, you know, sometimes what they do is they tell this very specific
0:56:50story about what Apple is doing with it.
0:56:52And then to the developers, they're like, "Well, here's the APIs.
0:56:54You guys figure it out."
0:56:56That happens sometimes too, where, you know, Apple's done enough, they think, to make their
0:57:02case for why you could use this on a fundamental, you know, system level and with their apps.
0:57:09And then the third parties kind of just get turned loose to figure out what they want
0:57:13to do with it.
0:57:14That's a possibility too.
0:57:15But it wouldn't surprise me if this all starts out very limited.
0:57:21Because that's one way that Apple can sometimes be careful about this stuff is to just dial
0:57:25it back a little bit.
0:57:26Like I know you want to use Force Touch for this and this and this and you want to have
0:57:28a launcher and you want to have this.
0:57:30No, all it does is this, whatever that thing is, if they can tell their story, if they
0:57:35can tell their marketing story.
0:57:37You know, I also don't know, because I don't know enough about iOS, the iOS game world,
0:57:41I also don't know if game developers look at something like this and say, "Oh, this
0:57:44would be really great for us because X," or whether it's irrelevant to them.
0:57:48But sometimes that can come into it too, where there's a very particular story they can tell
0:57:52and bring a couple developers on stage and say, you know, "iPhone games are going to
0:57:55be way better because we've got this extra pressure sensitivity thing that we can use
0:58:01now."
0:58:02Which again, may or may not be realistic, but they may find some people to say it.
0:58:06Unreal will have Infinity Blade force and you know.
0:58:11Well there's so many games.
0:58:12It'd be great for a life for a Star Wars game.
0:58:15Well I was thinking about, I was thinking about when I used to play, what was it? Was it Starcraft maybe?
0:58:23And you would, you would, maybe that was the game.
0:58:28You 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
0:58:35and it's basically like send the thing I selected over there.
0:58:38It's like a good shortcut. It's like a click shortcut.
0:58:40Because those are the... there's sort of two things you might want to do.
0:58:42And I can see something like that, right?
0:58:43There's some games where it's going to be really convenient to be able to tap on something to do this
0:58:47and force touch on something to do that.
0:58:49Um, you know, there are examples. I don't know.
0:58:52It'll be interesting to see.
0:58:53No, this would be good for games, because any additional input you can give on a piece of glass
0:58:57is useful, because they're extremely limited.
0:58:59Exactly. Exactly. This is adding, like I was saying about
0:59:02you don't have keyboard shortcuts or anything like that.
0:59:04So there are cases where more complexity will make things easier because you'll have more
0:59:11methods of input.
0:59:13A lot of times more complexity makes things harder, but sometimes it makes it easier because
0:59:16complexity, in the sense of nuance of input, that yes, it is weirder if you have like,
0:59:23"I can touch or I could force touch.
0:59:26What do I want to do here?"
0:59:27But if all you can do is touch and yet there are three or four things you might actually
0:59:32want to do in that situation, you know, then you end up having to have a menu button that
0:59:36you have to tap that brings up options that you have to tap on and, you know, adding that
0:59:40extra dimension makes actually ends up making it easier.
0:59:43I also imagine an iPad of a stylus and you press down on the screen with the stylus and
0:59:49then it opens a little tool palette around you and you select the tool in your drawing
0:59:53app, you know, like I could see it being useful there, um, in that, you know, a simple tap
0:59:59will activate this but if you press it will bring up something. I use
1:00:03Twitterrific for iOS and I love it I use it all my time all the time on my iPad
1:00:06and my iPhone and you know when you for some features you have to sort of you
1:00:11have to select the tweet and then you have to press the you know not
1:00:16everything's out on the tweet you've got to press the button and then it brings
1:00:18up some options and you choose and I could see like that could become like
1:00:22second nature well you don't need to hit that button you just need to force touch
1:00:25and then the options come up and you press and you're done I could totally
1:00:28see that. That is a perfect example of they have a tap and hold to
1:00:34switch accounts. We have to tap a particular icon and then you wait and it
1:00:37pops up and then you pick another account. That would be a perfect fit
1:00:41for a Force Touch because it would instantly know you were trying to do
1:00:44something different and give you the option. There are lots of examples. So
1:00:47this is where the speculation kind of goes off the cliff though because
1:00:52the real question is how is Apple going to sell this as a user feature assuming
1:00:56this is a big deal, what's the story they tell, how does this make this a better product
1:01:02in a way that makes people want to buy a new phone? Where does it fit into that story?
1:01:07Because that's the marketing story. And then there's the real story. And it's best when
1:01:10those things overlap. And they don't always.
1:01:17Shall we do some Ask Upgrade?
1:01:19I think that's a great idea.
1:01:21Jason, would you love to tell the people who is sponsoring Ask Upgrade this week?
1:01:25upgrade this week is sponsored by Stamps.com, our friends at Stamps.com. Most of us are
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1:02:51Incorporated empire, which encompasses everything I do now. In fact, I'm not going to give too
1:02:57much away, but when I was in Spokane, we purchased a gift for one of my Incomparable podcast
1:03:04compatriots at a local ballpark, a minor league ballpark, and this compatriot had already
1:03:11left when we bought it, but we wanted to send it to him. And so I took it and I said, "I
1:03:17will ship this back to him. Now there was a time when me shipping something, me agreeing
1:03:21to ship something meant that it would be a long time before anybody ever saw it because
1:03:25I hate going to the post office and shipping things. But now I could say with authority
1:03:30that that package will be mailed and mailed soon. And I can do that because I have stamps.com.
1:03:36I can just do it myself from my computer, hand it to the mail carrier and it's done.
1:03:42that's I would have put it off forever and the joke wouldn't have been as funny when
1:03:47the person received this this this thing in the mail and so that this is a perfect example
1:03:52it's like I'm getting a bunch of work done I've got I've got stuff to ship I print the
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1:04:22Click on the microphone and enter in "upgrade". And thank you so much to Stamps.com for supporting
1:04:27upgrade and #AskUpgrade.
1:04:31Jason Cliff would like to know, "Why is the sound quality of FaceTime audio so much different
1:04:36and the sound quality of a standard call on the iPhone?
1:04:42I'm going to assume that this is like a good quality FaceTime audio call and if you've
1:04:47ever done a FaceTime audio call you'll realize it sounds very different.
1:04:51And the answer is that standard calls are, even if they're entirely cellular to cellular,
1:04:58they're using the standards of the of pots of the plain old telephone system which is
1:05:04a very limited set of audio bandwidths, frequencies basically. It's old. It's based on the old
1:05:15analog telephone world, and it's something that we still haven't gotten rid of. However,
1:05:21things are changing now. You can make calls via IP. You can make calls using this high-quality—there's
1:05:30a high-quality phone call format now that is supported by some cell carriers, and if
1:05:35you're on a cell carrier that supports it and you call somebody on your carrier, sometimes
1:05:41the sound quality is way better. And sometimes if you call somebody who's on another cell
1:05:47carrier that supports it and those two carriers have agreed to talk to each other, then those
1:05:53will sound way better if you've got a relatively modern iPhone, I think a 5 or later.
1:05:59So eventually you're gonna hear this in a bunch of different places and eventually we'll
1:06:04say, "Hey, remember when phone calls sounded terrible?"
1:06:07But one way around it is just to not use the phone system for that call and instead use
1:06:11the internet, and that's what FaceTime Audio does.
1:06:13So it's using, it's like Skype, it's using a computer codec to encode your voice and
1:06:20it has a much wider range that is better fitted to the human voice than the old telephone
1:06:25system was, and so it sounds better.
1:06:27So the sooner we're all not making standard phone calls that sound terrible, the better.
1:06:34It is really strange. I mean, you know when you hear it, I'm sure the listeners know this,
1:06:40that the sound that comes out of a standard phone call is just not as rich as the sound
1:06:45that comes out of something like a podcast or even a Skype call or a FaceTime audio call.
1:06:51So you know, that's basically it, is that it's, when you fall back to the actual phone
1:06:57service you have to go to the lowest common denominator sound and it's a very limited
1:07:02frequency range.
1:07:03>> FaceTime audio is the closest I've heard to actual people, so like, it sounds the most
1:07:11like the people that I'm talking to, like it sounds very very real.
1:07:15- Yeah, I have failed to use this new high quality
1:07:20call thing that they added.
1:07:22That's never, I've never been on a carrier, I guess,
1:07:26that supports it or talked to somebody who was also
1:07:29on that carrier who supported it,
1:07:31on a device that supported it, but FaceTime audio,
1:07:33you know, as long as you've got another device
1:07:34that'll do FaceTime and it works great.
1:07:36I had a whole phone call the other week with Lex Friedman
1:07:39that was on FaceTime audio and it was very,
1:07:42he was at an airport and I could hear,
1:07:45I could hear people around him, I could hear the announcements.
1:07:50It was crazy, the detail compared to what we just assume a phone call sounds like.
1:07:56So I actually dislike the way it sounds because for that reason it sounds too real.
1:08:03I prefer the way Skype sounds.
1:08:04Skype has what I feel to be a warmer sound to it.
1:08:09They do some compression and they do some stuff with it that is different.
1:08:14I mean it all gets processed right but they do some different stuff with Skype than they
1:08:18do with FaceTime.
1:08:19So on episode 38 of the prompt on 5x5 me and Steven tested this so we were having this
1:08:26kind of discussion and we went from the local recording to Skype to FaceTime to show the
1:08:33different sound so I'll put that in the show notes.
1:08:36Nice.
1:08:37Plus it's old enough that if you listen to it you'll get to hear how different we both
1:08:40sound.
1:08:43So next up we have Dave. Dave would like to know, Jason, which VESA mount are you using
1:08:49for your iMac?
1:08:50JASON: Oh yeah, this, we were talking about my desktop again and my attempts to make it
1:08:57cleaner and every time you talk about what's on your desk and people look at a picture
1:09:01they ask, "What's that thing in the corner?" We talked about this. This is how we got on
1:09:04the whole orange nerf brain topic way back in the day.
1:09:07MATT [off-screen, "Brain Ball!"]
1:09:08We will link to my post from last November,
1:09:13what's on my desk.
1:09:14But the answer is I bought the VESA mount 5K iMac,
1:09:18which means it doesn't come with a foot.
1:09:20It can never have a foot.
1:09:21If I wanna put it on, set it on a desk,
1:09:24I'll need to buy a VESA mountable stand for it.
1:09:28But I wanted it off the desk.
1:09:30I wanted it on an arm.
1:09:31And the arm I got actually came with my desk,
1:09:35but it is a right angle products,
1:09:38hover series two spring arm.
1:09:43I don't know, I literally,
1:09:45the people who made my desk said,
1:09:50"Would you like an arm?"
1:09:52And you know, check this box in the order form,
1:09:56if you want a Visa mount arm, and I did.
1:10:00And so that's what I did.
1:10:03and I have an adjustable sit stand desk, that's the desk, it's the vert desk.
1:10:08And that's in that story too.
1:10:10That's what I was just about to ask you, I didn't remember that.
1:10:12Yeah, Wirecutter loves this desk, they called it "noticeably cheap".
1:10:17They didn't love it. They didn't love it. But I think it's fine.
1:10:21It is small and fits in my little office space here and is exactly what I want.
1:10:28Lucas asked, "Are the step counts from the Apple Watch automatically added to the
1:10:32Health app on the iPhone. I tested this, Jason, today.
1:10:35That's good, because I was going to say, "Why did you add this to the..."
1:10:39You're not supposed to add things I can't answer to Ask Upgrade, but I don't know the
1:10:43answer, so tell me, Myke, what happens.
1:10:45I didn't know this, so I wanted to test it. And this was early this morning when I was
1:10:50doing the prep for the show. So I opened the Health app on my iPhone, and it showed that
1:10:55I had taken 380 steps in the day. Again, very early in the morning, okay? Very early in
1:11:01I looked at my watch and my watch said that I had taken 380 steps. I
1:11:06opened Podometer++ which reads the information from the phone, right, and it
1:11:11said zero. So my deduction from this is that the health app takes the data from
1:11:19the watch and probably, and my understanding from talking to people
1:11:24like David Smith about this type of stuff, that the health app takes data from the phone
1:11:31and the watch and I think kind of works it out within a region between them so it can
1:11:37say oh you've walked this much.
1:11:40But then there is some stuff coming with iOS 9 and watchOS 2, as Steven has reminded me
1:11:46in the chat room, that will make it even better and they'll be able to share with each other
1:11:50because at the moment the watch can share with the phone and the phone can share with
1:11:55the watch but developers can't take access of that data.
1:11:58So I have, pedometer++ right now tells me I've taken 16 steps today and that's because
1:12:05I've been walking around with my watch.
1:12:07But not fun.
1:12:08We can talk about this on a future show but I did install the watchOS2 beta and I've actually
1:12:12been using my watch as my alarm clock the last couple of weeks and so I just got up
1:12:17and put the watch on. And so I've taken 300 steps so far this morning, but the phone,
1:12:23I haven't been carrying the phone around, and so it's only measured 16, and so pedometer++
1:12:29is only showing 16, but the health app will show that same 300 steps.
1:12:33>> So there you go.
1:12:35>> It's getting better. WatchOS 2 will help a lot of this stuff. I think this is talking
1:12:39about Apple sort of like taking a first step and then refining with the second version
1:12:45of it. I think we'll see a lot of that when iOS 9 and watchOS 2 ship.
1:12:51Aaron has asked have either of us found any good third-party Apple watch bands?
1:12:56I haven't. I've seen people tweet about them but I haven't tried any. I did do an order
1:13:03for that company that says they're making lugs that are compatible with standard watch
1:13:09and hopefully they will actually I'm still 50/50 on whether that product will
1:13:15ever actually ship but I'm waiting for the stuff to come from the made for
1:13:21Apple watch program or whatever they're called yeah because I don't think any of
1:13:24that stuff is out yet like I will look at third-party watch bands when I can
1:13:30find them on the Apple Store website that's that's what the what they're the
1:13:34ones that I'll look at because I just want to know that the lugs that are
1:13:40holding on my Apple watch that I consider to be so dear to me are gonna
1:13:44keep closed right and the made for Apple watch products the lugs come from Apple
1:13:50Apple provides the lugs and then you tie into them as I watch band designer so
1:13:57that's what I'm waiting for well and finally today Rob has asked us what
1:14:03youtubers we watch and how do we feel about YouTube I mean I like YouTube one
1:14:08of the things for me and I haven't really included these so much in a
1:14:11recent I follow a bunch of different YouTube accounts and pick and choose
1:14:16from stuff that I like and accounts that I like that aren't necessarily youtubers
1:14:20like I like watching the verges videos and polygons videos and tested comms
1:14:24videos but I don't really consider them to be like youtubers in the same way
1:14:30right? They're not like individuals they're just like companies who also put
1:14:34their videos on YouTube so I don't really think that they count as much.
1:14:39But my the two YouTube personalities that I enjoy the most and watch every
1:14:45single video of course CGP Grey and my new kind of favorite youtuber who I've
1:14:52been binging is MKBHD, Marques Brownlee. I would hope that everybody
1:14:59that listens to this show is at least familiar with him because he is probably
1:15:04one of the most important people in tech journalism today like he just is he he
1:15:09goes to every single event like he's given all of the stuff that you know
1:15:13he's given all pre-release hardware and the guy's super smart and he creates
1:15:17very informative very entertaining videos about technology and I am I'm
1:15:23becoming a very very big fan of his work so I would thoroughly suggest subscribing
1:15:30to MKBHD's channel. All right and then I am a I am a 44 year old man so do I even
1:15:39watch YouTube? I do um the let's see I subscribe to some silly stuff I
1:15:49subscribe to Anglophania which is a thing that's from BBC America where
1:15:52there are where British people tell you funny differences between British things and American
1:15:58things. I enjoy that. It's very funny. Alton Brown, the food TV network personality, I'll
1:16:07describe him as, and former host of Good Eats, which is one of my favorite, certainly one
1:16:13of my favorite informational TV shows of all time. He has a YouTube channel that he hasn't
1:16:18updated a lot lately, I think because he's so busy with the various competition shows
1:16:23that he is a host of on the Food Network, but he makes—his YouTube channel is fun,
1:16:30he's got a lot of—it's like the second coming of Good Eats in a way, he's got a lot of things
1:16:36that he makes and explains how he makes various food items on that channel that are pretty
1:16:41cool, along with some food-related items. You have to watch the videos to see, but they're
1:16:46Uh, smarter every day is great.
1:16:47Uh, you may know that guy from the, a lot of people linked to the, the thing
1:16:54about the bicycle, how, if you reverse the, um, if you reverse the behavior of
1:16:59a bicycle and how you pedal a bicycle to go forward, it basically everybody
1:17:04falls off and it takes a long time to unlearn your bicycle riding behavior
1:17:10that you've, you've, uh, you've stored away and then relearn how to ride a
1:17:13bicycle the proper way or the this new inverted way that's a the there's some
1:17:19great videos there and then Phil Plait the bad astronomer has is doing some
1:17:27videos that are part of this larger series of crash course videos that are
1:17:31again tied to tied to PBS I believe but he's got a it's called crash course
1:17:36astronomy and I just enjoy astronomy things so I list that but mostly I just
1:17:43bounce around and watch what the internet wants me to watch and I don't, you know, even though I
1:17:47have some YouTube subscriptions I don't necessarily, you know, go to them regularly. A lot of times it's
1:17:53just what people suggest and I go watch those. I should say in contrast to my kids who absolutely,
1:18:00if you ask them this question, could list probably 30 YouTubers that they love.
1:18:04So like what I tend to do when I'm eating lunch or whatever, I open up YouTube and I either watch
1:18:12a video from somebody that I'm subscribed to. So I subscribe to a bunch of channels just,
1:18:16and the reason I do this, I don't necessarily watch other videos, is I subscribe to channels that
1:18:21I've seen videos of that I'm interested in, because then when I go to YouTube's homepage,
1:18:27it suggests videos to me. And quite a lot of the time I just open up a video and watch it
1:18:32because it seems interesting. Yeah and I've got like Geek and Sundry which is where the the
1:18:36the tabletop stuff from Wil Wheaton is, was, is? I don't know.
1:18:42I can't remember with Geek and Sundry. I've got a bunch of stuff like that in there
1:18:45too that it's stuff. I actually, I just, it has not crossed the threshold for me where
1:18:51there's enough new stuff in there that is stuff I really want to watch that I check
1:18:56my YouTube subscriptions regularly. That hasn't happened so much yet. I would not be surprised
1:19:02if it did. With that, like, I agree with you, but the
1:19:06thing is I also know that if I looked and actually went in and found stuff and
1:19:12was actively trying to find stuff it would become that. I just don't spend
1:19:16enough time looking. I know that there is lots and lots and lots of stuff in there
1:19:20that I'm sure I will find fascinating but I just haven't really gone in and
1:19:26done that work I suppose. Yeah. So there we go. I put a bunch of links to those
1:19:33YouTube accounts that we've spoken about as well as many other things that we've
1:19:36spoken about today. If you head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/51 you can
1:19:41find them or they should be showing up in your podcast app of choice.
1:19:45Perhaps with chapter marks, who knows? Not today. Too busy for chapter markers today?
1:19:52Just testing, Jason. If you would like to find us online there's a couple
1:19:59ways you can do that you can find Jason on Twitter is @jsnelljsnell and he is over at
1:20:04sixcolors.com and I am I Myke I am Y K E and you can find my shows and other shows that
1:20:13Jason does as well including Clockwise and Liftoff over at relay.fm. Thanks again to
1:20:19our sponsors this week the lovely stamps.com Squarespace and GoToMeeting for helping us
1:20:24out, but most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye Mr Snell.
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