Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *Music*

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 49.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Hover, Simplified Domain Management, Stamps.com,

00:00:18 ◼   ► Postage On Demand and GoToMeeting, where you can make it easy to meet with your team, wherever

00:00:23 ◼   ► you need to, wherever you are.

00:00:27 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Hi Myke.

00:00:32 ◼   ► How you doing, sir?

00:00:34 ◼   ► Pretty good.

00:00:35 ◼   ► It's been a while.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Yeah, welcome back from your little trip.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:00:39 ◼   ► We, you know, we recorded a little early and now we're recording a little bit late and

00:00:42 ◼   ► in between I was gone for 10 days and we drove so, so far.

00:00:49 ◼   ► We drove about 2,000 miles, which as Federico Fatici demanded a translation that's about

00:00:55 ◼   ► 3200 kilometers round-trip and that's also 0.011 light seconds for aliens out

00:01:05 ◼   ► there listening so good to know and I wrote a little piece that we can link to

00:01:10 ◼   ► in the show notes about navigating using Apple Maps that because I did use Apple

00:01:16 ◼   ► Maps the whole way partially because Google Maps kind of doesn't work right

00:01:20 ◼   ► on iOS 9. My phone is running iOS 9. And I noticed some features that may be new

00:01:26 ◼   ► features or slightly different features, certainly not features I noticed before.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And it, you know, that was, it was useful in going down. We went down some country

00:01:33 ◼   ► roads and back roads in in Northern California and Oregon and Washington. But

00:01:38 ◼   ► we went all the way up to Seattle, north of, just north of Seattle, I think

00:01:42 ◼   ► was our northernmost point, and then back down. So a lot of car time,

00:01:46 ◼   ► time, a lot of car trip time.

00:01:51 ◼   ► What's the bing bong sound?

00:01:55 ◼   ► So somebody says that this actually happens in iOS 8 when you're not in Apple Maps, although

00:02:00 ◼   ► we were in Apple Maps and we heard it for a while and then it went away, which was as

00:02:03 ◼   ► we approached the intersection when you need to turn, my phone would just go bing bong

00:02:07 ◼   ► if you needed to turn left and bong bing if you needed to turn right, which I thought

00:02:12 ◼   ► was really cool and less annoying than the voice and then it stopped binging

00:02:19 ◼   ► and bonging and we never got that sound back couldn't figure out how to get that

00:02:23 ◼   ► back didn't know why it was there perhaps it was a mistake perhaps it was

00:02:27 ◼   ► a bug but it was I found it kind of pleasant to turn off the voice and still

00:02:31 ◼   ► have a little sort of audible notification that we were about to turn

00:02:35 ◼   ► so that was that yeah and there was there are a bunch of like warning heavy

00:02:39 ◼   ► traffic ahead alerts and an offer to reroute and the iOS 9 contextual searches for things

00:02:45 ◼   ► like you know restaurants or gas stations or whatever those are good.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Sure beats the old method of sort of opening Apple Maps and typing restaurants and hoping

00:02:56 ◼   ► for something which was never just never worked.

00:03:00 ◼   ► That was actually much better.

00:03:02 ◼   ► So that combined with Yelp helped us identify places to eat kind of along the way.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I did have somebody said something snide on Twitter about, "Well, you're lucky to be alive

00:03:11 ◼   ► after you used Apple Maps for that long."

00:03:14 ◼   ► And you know, without getting on too much over a rant, I'm really getting tired of it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► There's people just making jokes about Apple Maps.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Apple Maps is bad in some places and good in other places.

00:03:26 ◼   ► But the sense of...

00:03:28 ◼   ► Like, I've heard from some Waze users who really love it, and my father-in-law really

00:03:31 ◼   ► loves it.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:03:33 ◼   ► From them, I get this sort of like--

00:03:36 ◼   ► they're diehards.

00:03:37 ◼   ► They love Waze.

00:03:38 ◼   ► They've integrated into their lives.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It's great.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It doesn't work for me.

00:03:40 ◼   ► I don't like Waze, but that's fine.

00:03:43 ◼   ► My father-in-law is kind of obsessed with it.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But it's especially the people who are like, well,

00:03:49 ◼   ► everybody knows Google Maps is great and Apple Maps is

00:03:51 ◼   ► terrible, so you should never use Apple Maps

00:03:54 ◼   ► because it's terrible.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Well, first off, the map data varies widely.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And I've said all along that I live in the Bay Area.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Apple actually did a very good job with the map data in the Bay Area because they live

00:04:05 ◼   ► here and I think that it's probably much, I've heard from people, it's much, much worse

00:04:09 ◼   ► depending on where you are in the country and in the world.

00:04:12 ◼   ► That said, I was also driving back roads in rural Oregon and Washington and it worked

00:04:18 ◼   ► just fine.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I have also had Google Maps lead me wrong within a mile of the Google campus, like really

00:04:24 ◼   ► wrong.

00:04:25 ◼   ► So like driving into somebody's driveway and it thought it was a restaurant, kind of wrong.

00:04:29 ◼   ► So you know, your map quality may vary, but I will say I spent 2,000 miles basically with

00:04:38 ◼   ► Apple Maps running, and it was in iOS 9, and it was pretty good.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So you know, your mileage literally may vary.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Let's do some follow up.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:53 ◼   ► So, the first piece comes from Matt this week.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Matt wrote in to say, "After listening to the latest episode of Upgrade, I recommend

00:05:02 ◼   ► that you guys read 'Hatching Twitter' by Nick Bilton."

00:05:05 ◼   ► It's got a lot of insiders, he got a lot of insiders to talk to him, and what Matt learned

00:05:10 ◼   ► was a lot about what happened in the early days of Twitter that he did not know about,

00:05:16 ◼   ► and said that he actually came out of it respecting Ev a lot and without so much respect for Jack.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Have you read this book?

00:05:24 ◼   ► I haven't read it.

00:05:25 ◼   ► No, it's been one of those things in my mind,

00:05:28 ◼   ► especially recently, as we've been talking about this stuff,

00:05:31 ◼   ► but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

00:05:34 ◼   ► - All right, we'll put it on the list.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you'd probably get through it quicker

00:05:38 ◼   ► than I will if you say you're gonna put it on.

00:05:40 ◼   ► - But I have so many books to read.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I bought that Apple book that people recommended

00:05:48 ◼   ► about the kind of like when jobs was gone time,

00:05:51 ◼   ► and that's just sitting on a bookshelf.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I have so many books to read.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Plus, honestly, I don't relish reading books about the computer industry, non-fiction books

00:05:59 ◼   ► about the computer industry, because I feel like my book time is...

00:06:02 ◼   ► I like my book time to be my entertainment time and not my reading this for work time.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And I read a lot of stuff on the web about computers and technology, but then to read

00:06:13 ◼   ► books about the history of companies in the technology industry, it's a lot harder for

00:06:18 ◼   ► me to gin up enough enthusiasm to do that.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Sure.

00:06:22 ◼   ► No, I get that.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I totally get that.

00:06:24 ◼   ► But just us both saying we'll put it on our lists,

00:06:27 ◼   ► like even though my list has no books on it

00:06:29 ◼   ► and your list has a ton of books on it,

00:06:32 ◼   ► you're more likely to get to it before I do, I think.

00:06:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, well that's probably true, but that's okay.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - I might get an audiobook, maybe, we'll see.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:06:40 ◼   ► We heard from a bunch of Tweetbot users

00:06:43 ◼   ► and, you know, of others.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - And others, so we talked about Twitter

00:06:48 ◼   ► and we talked about the Twitter apps, you know,

00:06:51 ◼   ► we have a nice note from listener Matt who said, different Matt, Matt2, Matt Beta. So

00:07:00 ◼   ► Matt2 said he tried the iOS app from Twitter and said it was much better than he remembered

00:07:07 ◼   ► it but I also saw like in my timeline today I saw Andy Bayo complaining about how slow

00:07:14 ◼   ► the Twitter app was on his iPhone 5. You know, it's a problematic app and somebody else in

00:07:21 ◼   ► Twitter timeline while I was on vacation so I don't even have the name said that

00:07:24 ◼   ► that team has like 70 developers or something some ridiculous number of

00:07:28 ◼   ► people developing the iOS app and maybe that's the problem is that they they it

00:07:37 ◼   ► baffles me how bad Twitter's apps are and and and we talked about it quite a

00:07:41 ◼   ► bit in the last show but yeah who knows I don't know what's going on there maybe

00:07:47 ◼   ► with all the changes things will change we know that they just hired the

00:07:52 ◼   ► developer of what some consider the best Android iOS or Android Twitter app to

00:07:59 ◼   ► presumably work on the Android Twitter app but who knows we saw what happened

00:08:03 ◼   ► with Tweety which was a great Mac Twitter app and iOS Twitter app.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Yeah, Joaquim Vergé I'm gonna say he is the developer of Falcon which is by far

00:08:14 ◼   ► and away the best of track for Android and has been for a long time.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go.

00:08:19 ◼   ► He's been hired by Twitter.

00:08:20 ◼   ► That could be good news, but I fear with their track record it's bad news that he'll disappear

00:08:24 ◼   ► and nothing will happen and then in six months or a year he will leave being incredibly frustrated

00:08:30 ◼   ► by whatever is bogging down.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I don't know, politics, bad management, bad lack of vision.

00:08:37 ◼   ► I don't know what's bogging it down.

00:08:39 ◼   ► I also got a bunch of questions about why I think Twitter for Mac is bad.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And I don't, the show isn't long enough for me to go into all the details.

00:08:49 ◼   ► But I will say it crashes, it gets super slow and sluggish a lot of the time, it eats up

00:08:52 ◼   ► disk space sometimes by saving just huge amounts of junk to a cache folder that doesn't need

00:08:58 ◼   ► to be that huge.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Clicking on a tweet will, I would say one time out of five will get you an action on

00:09:07 ◼   ► the tweet above it or below it because it's just lost track of what tweet.

00:09:12 ◼   ► That can be really awkward when you're trying to favorite something for later or retweet

00:09:15 ◼   ► something or you're clicking to see a thread about a particular tweet and you get a thread

00:09:20 ◼   ► about a tweet that was near it.

00:09:23 ◼   ► It doesn't support the muting feature that they added.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It doesn't support the quoted tweet format that they added.

00:09:29 ◼   ► The list goes on.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It's bad.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And yet I use it because there are things in it that are great.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And the reason that they're in there great and it's the notifications tab is the reason

00:09:41 ◼   ► I use it.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And the reason that it's only in that I use it and it's in there is because those aren't

00:09:45 ◼   ► in the API for third parties to use.

00:09:47 ◼   ► So I third parties cannot they can try to hack it but you know the Twitter app will

00:09:52 ◼   ► show me when somebody favorites something when somebody retweets something.

00:09:55 ◼   ► There's a lot of detail about what's happening on Twitter to the stuff that I am writing

00:10:00 ◼   ► that I don't see unless I'm using the Twitter app.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Does it do the like favorite a tweet you were mentioned in type stuff as well as on the

00:10:09 ◼   ► iOS app?

00:10:10 ◼   ► It doesn't do that.

00:10:12 ◼   ► That's one of the many things that it doesn't yet do.

00:10:15 ◼   ► The quoted tweet thing kills me now because that's the official way you quote a tweet

00:10:19 ◼   ► in Twitter and it shows you the tweet that was quoted and Twitterrific on iOS has it

00:10:24 ◼   ► and it's just not in the Mac app.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I'm not sure if people are paying attention to the Mac app or not.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Anyway, it's bad.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Twitter for the Mac sounds a lot like using Tweetbot for iPad.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And the thing is that the, um, I use Twitter on my Mac.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I'm at my Mac a lot and I use Twitter on my Mac and there are no good options at this

00:10:46 ◼   ► point.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Twitter, the native Twitter app, the, the, the platform app is the best of a bad lot

00:10:53 ◼   ► right now.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I don't like Tweetbot for Mac.

00:10:55 ◼   ► for Mac has not been updated in years and I don't really want to use the

00:10:59 ◼   ► Twitter website. I'm not a fan of being forced into a web browser in order to

00:11:04 ◼   ► use a social network. That's why I don't use Facebook very much is that I just

00:11:08 ◼   ► don't go to Facebook and the idea of keeping a Twitter window open to the

00:11:13 ◼   ► website in order to click around and see things it's just you know I like the

00:11:16 ◼   ► keyboard shortcuts there's lots of reasons. Anyway so what a mess to

00:11:21 ◼   ► restate the feedback we got and just say what a mess it's a mess I think that's

00:11:29 ◼   ► enough on on Twitter follow-up for now we have more Twitter coming later about

00:11:33 ◼   ► news because as we correctly predicted you the moment we talk about something

00:11:37 ◼   ► and and save that episode for a few days then things start to happen we got we

00:11:45 ◼   ► got a very nice piece of follow-up from a listener. Right, who will remain

00:11:53 ◼   ► nameless. Yes, which is probably best in these kinds of scenarios. And they

00:12:00 ◼   ► had something very nice to say and apparently they said that upgrade got

00:12:04 ◼   ► them through a difficult time, which is a really nice thing to see. I think

00:12:07 ◼   ► recently I think I've been kind of saying this kind of stuff on upgrade,

00:12:13 ◼   ► sorry on analog this is upgrade hello Jason I have been getting a little bit

00:12:19 ◼   ► jaded on certain parts of the internet as of late there are just some things

00:12:24 ◼   ► that are grating on me a little and getting this kind of stuff it's very

00:12:28 ◼   ► very nice to see to try and understand you have an impact on somebody's life

00:12:32 ◼   ► and more than just an entertainment value but this person cited that my

00:12:37 ◼   ► British accent my soothing British accent and Jason's vast knowledge and

00:12:43 ◼   ► endless anecdotes which are actually I didn't realize but as soon as this person put it

00:12:47 ◼   ► into context the two things that I love most about you in regards to this show.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I like endless anecdotes can be read two ways by the way it can be read as a an endless

00:12:56 ◼   ► stream of different anecdotes it can also be read as anecdotes that go on forever.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I assumed the former for the listener and myself and and they said that those those

00:13:09 ◼   ► things helped them get through a tough time and we are very sorry that the person went

00:13:14 ◼   ► through that tough time and we're happy to have helped somehow.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Yeah, that was very nice and I want to amplify your point which is there's a lot of, I have

00:13:24 ◼   ► moments where I'm opening my web browser or like my email client or my Twitter app, whichever

00:13:31 ◼   ► one I'm using that day, and I have a moment of like, well, let's see what nasty things

00:13:38 ◼   ► somebody has sent or said, right? Like there's just like this feeling of like, well, let's

00:13:43 ◼   ► wade in and you almost expect just the horrible negativity. And it's very nice. It's very

00:13:49 ◼   ► easy to let negative things collect. And it's nice when you see something that's just a

00:13:56 ◼   ► good story about a difficult situation, but it was a warm, fuzzy thing. So thank you to

00:14:02 ◼   ► that listener.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, there are, I get nice things said to me every day, as I'm sure you do too.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah, absolutely.

00:14:10 ◼   ► But there's something that comes from a nice thing that's really out of the ordinary.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And this was that.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And this was that.

00:14:17 ◼   ► For sure.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Michael wrote in about obituaries.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Obituaries!

00:14:22 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes to a nice New York Times story that I think, this is

00:14:26 ◼   ► the one that I remember reading and couldn't come up with when we were talking about it,

00:14:30 ◼   ► is about the pre-writing of stories, especially obituaries at the New York Times. So you can

00:14:37 ◼   ► read more about it if you're interested in the subject of people writing these stories

00:14:42 ◼   ► way ahead of time and the kind of euphemisms they use, like, you know, "We're updating

00:14:45 ◼   ► your biographical information for our database." Yeah, we're writing your obituary. The other

00:14:54 ◼   ► Another thing related to this was we got a nice thing, also from Michael, I believe,

00:15:01 ◼   ► that was about - it was a good story and I didn't verify whether it's true, but I want

00:15:05 ◼   ► it to be true so I'm just going to go with it.

00:15:09 ◼   ► This part is true.

00:15:10 ◼   ► The Mercury Music Prize was given out.

00:15:13 ◼   ► It was given out to - well, I'm not going to spoil the story - it was given out.

00:15:19 ◼   ► The BBC news announcer was reading the script, but when she got to the name of the winner

00:15:25 ◼   ► of the Mercury Music Prize, instead of the actual name, it said "the XX," just sort of

00:15:32 ◼   ► like as a placeholder.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And so she sort of got flummoxed and apologized and said, "Well, they gave out the music prizes

00:15:39 ◼   ► and moved on."

00:15:42 ◼   ► And as Michael pointed out, had she been a little more clued up on her modern music,

00:15:45 ◼   ► she would have realized that the prize winners that year were indeed indie pop band The XX.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And that was the standard BBC News placeholder. Apparently, because we were talking about

00:15:56 ◼   ► TK and other and heads and HED and DEC, D-E-K and things like that. So apparently this was

00:16:01 ◼   ► like a conflict. I don't know if The XX is actually specifically named because of that

00:16:06 ◼   ► phenomenon, or whether it was just a coincidence. But that's a funny moment where, you know,

00:16:12 ◼   ► If you want really good publicity for your band or whatever in the news media, you might

00:16:21 ◼   ► not want to call yourself like "Head TK" because that would be really confusing.

00:16:28 ◼   ► We had some feedback in regards to Audition and Logic.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, so we talked about this in the context of, we had I think a NASC upgrade

00:16:39 ◼   ► about why Logic and not Audition.

00:16:44 ◼   ► And one of the things I mentioned was, although I'm not opposed to the idea of subscription

00:16:49 ◼   ► services for software, Logic was $200 and Adobe Audition was $20 a month.

00:16:55 ◼   ► So very rapidly it would become much more expensive.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And that that was something, if you're starting from zero, that would be something to take

00:17:01 ◼   ► into account.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Now somebody sent me a link, and again, I just was on vacation.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Somebody sent me a link saying that you can still buy a standalone copy of Adobe Audition.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I searched around and couldn't find out any information about that being true.

00:17:13 ◼   ► If it is true, Adobe certainly doesn't want anybody to know about it.

00:17:15 ◼   ► They want you to pay for Creative Cloud in order to get Audition.

00:17:20 ◼   ► We did get a nice note from listener Brandon who said that that discussion of GarageBand

00:17:27 ◼   ► and when do you switch to Logic and take the hit in terms of the learning curve is-- and

00:17:34 ◼   ► comparing Logic to the other sound products that you could go to, audio editing, he's

00:17:38 ◼   ► facing that with Aputure being dead and struggling to learn a new app that feels foreign and

00:17:44 ◼   ► doesn't seem to offer anything significantly better than what he'd been productive in for

00:17:47 ◼   ► so long. I'd say that's absolutely true. Aputure is going to work for a while so you could

00:17:51 ◼   ► stay there, but this is the big difference, right? Like, if Logic was announced as being

00:17:56 ◼   ► at the end of its life, I would start having that moment of like, "Well, pretty soon I'm

00:17:58 ◼   ► going to have to switch and learn something new." Once you're using dead software for

00:18:03 ◼   ► your livelihood. It's a very difficult situation and you have to you have to

00:18:07 ◼   ► grapple with it as Brandon is doing now. I will say for people like Brandon who

00:18:13 ◼   ► are used to using aperture I can't help with the learning curve. There are lots

00:18:17 ◼   ► of great online training that can help with the learning curve but what I can

00:18:21 ◼   ► say is the Adobe Creative Cloud photo bundle is by far the best deal that

00:18:26 ◼   ► Adobe offers for $10 and I'm paying for this. For $10 a month you get

00:18:31 ◼   ► Photoshop and Lightroom and I don't even use Lightroom and I consider $10 a month

00:18:39 ◼   ► worth it for the latest version of Photoshop but you also get Lightroom

00:18:44 ◼   ► it's the photography bundle and it's $10 a month it's actually a pretty great

00:18:47 ◼   ► deal everything else they sell is much more expensive than that including

00:18:52 ◼   ► audition all the other apps are sort of $20 per you can do I think it's 40 or 50

00:18:56 ◼   ► dollars a month for everything in the in the suite but this bundle is a great

00:19:00 ◼   ► deal at $10 a month so I will recommend that as something to try and but yeah

00:19:05 ◼   ► learning curve after your software gets discontinued is awful and I feel for you

00:19:10 ◼   ► Brandon I can't believe that Photoshop is only $10 a month I know right that

00:19:15 ◼   ► doesn't seem right I feel like they missed off a zero yes they made a mistake

00:19:21 ◼   ► I mean it is an annuity I mean you are you are paying $120 a year to Adobe for

00:19:28 ◼   ► as long as you want to keep using Photoshop.

00:19:30 ◼   ► But that one's worth it.

00:19:32 ◼   ► If it was $20 a month,

00:19:33 ◼   ► I would probably consider going elsewhere.

00:19:35 ◼   ► But for $10 a month, I didn't even hesitate.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I said, is Photoshop worth $120 a year?

00:19:40 ◼   ► To me, given all the things I do with it,

00:19:42 ◼   ► the answer was absolutely yes.

00:19:44 ◼   ► And so that was not, it was not a problem.

00:19:47 ◼   ► - I mean, I never use it.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I mean, I have a version of Pixelmator

00:19:51 ◼   ► that I bought a year or two ago that does the job for me

00:19:54 ◼   ► because I find Photoshop to be too confusing

00:19:57 ◼   ► too complex for what I need it for and I vary I'm probably open pixelmator a couple of times a year.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Ah sure and I've got Acorn and I like it but I have been using Photoshop since like I was in

00:20:11 ◼   ► college and it just it I I know all those tools I know how it works and so having it around

00:20:19 ◼   ► and I what I discovered was that my retina iMac the the version of Photoshop that I have

00:20:24 ◼   ► in a box doesn't support retina and that was the moment where I thought, "Okay, well, I'm

00:20:29 ◼   ► gonna pay for it then.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I'm gonna pay for the new version because it'll actually use the retina pixels on my

00:20:33 ◼   ► display."

00:20:34 ◼   ► And I haven't regretted it.

00:20:36 ◼   ► You would be burning your eyes trying to look at the older version with that beautiful display.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Last piece of...

00:20:46 ◼   ► This is actually the last piece of follow-up/the first piece of follow-out this week.

00:20:51 ◼   ► week is the one year anniversary of Real AFM as Jason mentioned before the show

00:20:56 ◼   ► which is also episode 50 of Upgrade and episode 100 of Clockwise which is...

00:21:01 ◼   ► It's a big week. So beautiful. It is indeed a very big week and we are, me and Stephen,

00:21:06 ◼   ► are going to be doing a live streamed Q&A at 1.15 p.m. Eastern Time on August

00:21:14 ◼   ► 18th which is our one year anniversary. We would love your questions for that Q&A

00:21:20 ◼   ► you will be able to hashtag, use the hashtag #RelayQA and I'm putting a

00:21:26 ◼   ► blog post in our show notes as well this week so you can see that.

00:21:31 ◼   ► We will be offering it on demand I guess in our B-sides feed which I'll also

00:21:38 ◼   ► put a link to in our show notes in case you've not seen it before. In that

00:21:42 ◼   ► B-sides feed at the moment you will find the special where Jason and Steven spoke

00:21:46 ◼   ► about space for about an hour. If you want to listen to that you should because

00:21:50 ◼   ► it's fun. But we'll be taking some questions. We'd love it if you could

00:21:54 ◼   ► contribute with any questions or anything you'd like to know about Real

00:21:58 ◼   ► AFM as we celebrate our one year anniversary. And that is one of a few

00:22:02 ◼   ► little things we have planned for next week to celebrate. Nice. So you can do

00:22:08 ◼   ► that. Right, should we take our first break for this week's episode? I think

00:22:12 ◼   ► That's a great idea.

00:22:13 ◼   ► - Excellent.

00:22:14 ◼   ► This week, this show is brought to you by our friends

00:22:17 ◼   ► over at GoToMeeting from Citrix.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Now, I want you to take a moment

00:22:23 ◼   ► to paint yourself a little image in your mind.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Allow me to paint a picture with these words.

00:22:28 ◼   ► If you try and think about how much time

00:22:31 ◼   ► your company or your own business,

00:22:33 ◼   ► the company that you're in or the business that you own,

00:22:36 ◼   ► how much time and money must be spent

00:22:39 ◼   ► trying to hold meetings.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I mean, you think about all the hassle that goes into that,

00:22:42 ◼   ► like trying to get everybody in the same place

00:22:44 ◼   ► at the same time,

00:22:45 ◼   ► like trying to synchronize all those calendars

00:22:47 ◼   ► and making sure that that person can get

00:22:49 ◼   ► from that meeting on time

00:22:51 ◼   ► because this person's across town

00:22:52 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff.

00:22:53 ◼   ► You've got to get all that into place.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And once you've done that,

00:22:56 ◼   ► you've got to set up the actual meeting rooms.

00:22:58 ◼   ► So you've got to find a meeting room available.

00:23:00 ◼   ► And once you've done that,

00:23:00 ◼   ► you've got to get the projector set up

00:23:02 ◼   ► and you've got to get all the tech set up.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Then you've got to be able to

00:23:05 ◼   ► get all the refreshments sorted.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Once you've done all of this,

00:23:09 ◼   ► You've gone through all of this hassle, all this aggravation.

00:23:12 ◼   ► You can then hold your meeting.

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00:24:45 ◼   ► Thank you so much to GoToMeeting for supporting this show.

00:24:49 ◼   ► - Yay.

00:24:52 ◼   ► - So you mentioned Twitter, we spoke about Twitter.

00:24:55 ◼   ► - Let's talk about Twitter more.

00:24:57 ◼   ► - Because it ended up, we were very right

00:25:00 ◼   ► in our feeling that we were right to cover this last week.

00:25:05 ◼   ► - Oh man, we hit it at just the right time,

00:25:09 ◼   ► as it turned out.

00:25:10 ◼   ► We were worried our timing was off,

00:25:11 ◼   ► but it turned out to be on.

00:25:13 ◼   ► - Because I wanted to talk about them

00:25:14 ◼   ► because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on,

00:25:17 ◼   ► but I was concerned, as you heard from listening to Charles,

00:25:20 ◼   ► I was concerned that by recording it in advance,

00:25:23 ◼   ► some stuff might have happened.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Some stuff has happened, but luckily,

00:25:26 ◼   ► not really too much in the time

00:25:28 ◼   ► that has been an issue for us.

00:25:29 ◼   ► So we were talking about Jack and whether we thought Jack was the right move for CEO.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Right, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, CEO of Square, former CEO of Twitter.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Just to set the table there.

00:25:47 ◼   ► And he has expressed an interest and acting CEO of Twitter, right?

00:25:51 ◼   ► He's the interim acting CEO of Twitter.

00:25:53 ◼   ► He is I-CEO.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Yeah, but somebody said, somebody within Twitter said,

00:25:58 ◼   ► well we don't consider this to be a position that can be filled by somebody who is doing

00:26:02 ◼   ► other things which was this code for like Jack you got to quit square if you want the

00:26:06 ◼   ► job and Jack's response was something like well I'm not going to quit square and I do

00:26:11 ◼   ► want the job I think. So the question was going to be well what happens now and we got

00:26:18 ◼   ► some of that last week while I was in the car. So tell me what happened last week. Chris

00:26:23 ◼   ► Sacker, who we also spoke about last week. We cited his post about about about what

00:26:28 ◼   ► Twitter should do next strategically with its product. And who has been... people

00:26:33 ◼   ► have suggested that this post may have been the reason that got Dick Costolo

00:26:41 ◼   ► fired basically or was the reason Dick Costolo stepped down or whatever was the

00:26:45 ◼   ► reason Twitter gave. Sacker issued a selection of tweets, the most important

00:26:52 ◼   ► being that he believes that Jack should be CEO. Adam Bain, who is the current COO, I

00:27:02 ◼   ► believe, should become president. And Ev Williams should become chairman of the board. That's

00:27:14 ◼   ► his overall feeling. So you should have Jack as CEO, Adam Bain to president and COO, and

00:27:21 ◼   ► Ev should become executive chairman of the board.

00:27:24 ◼   ► This was Sakha's overall feeling.

00:27:26 ◼   ► There's many tweets, I linked to her TechCrunch article

00:27:29 ◼   ► that has links to them in there.

00:27:32 ◼   ► But basically he thinks, like for whatever reason,

00:27:36 ◼   ► Sakha believes that this is the right move.

00:27:39 ◼   ► He thinks that Dorsey is the one with the product vision

00:27:43 ◼   ► to be able to go in and do that again.

00:27:45 ◼   ► And I just listened to the talk show with John Gruber

00:27:49 ◼   ► and his guest Matthew Panzareno,

00:27:50 ◼   ► when they talk about this as well.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It's also a good listen if you are interested in this topic,

00:27:54 ◼   ► which I hope you are

00:27:55 ◼   ► because you're listening to us right now.

00:27:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:58 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:27:58 ◼   ► That's right.

00:27:59 ◼   ► If you're not interested in this topic,

00:28:00 ◼   ► you should have forwarded to the next,

00:28:02 ◼   ► well, we don't have chapter markers yet,

00:28:04 ◼   ► but you should forward to the next bit about Google

00:28:09 ◼   ► and not be here.

00:28:11 ◼   ► So if you are interested,

00:28:13 ◼   ► then you should probably read that article.

00:28:16 ◼   ► - So when they're--

00:28:18 ◼   ► - A little table of contents,

00:28:19 ◼   ► index happening in the middle of the show there, indexing. It's not a vertical, really,

00:28:24 ◼   ► it's more like a meta feature of the podcast where I appear in a future-- Myke, in a future

00:28:30 ◼   ► beta what we'll do is there'll be a sound, there'll be like a ding sound or a bing bong

00:28:33 ◼   ► perhaps, and then a German voice will appear because I just have decided it will be a German

00:28:39 ◼   ► man, and he will say-- he will explain the structure of the rest of the show.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - You are effectively the clippie of this podcast now, you know that, don't you?

00:28:47 ◼   ► You appear to be doing a podcast.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Can I help you with that?

00:28:51 ◼   ► You appear to be in your first of two topics.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Can I help you?

00:28:56 ◼   ► So I think at this point, whether or not Jack is actually good for the role or the right

00:29:02 ◼   ► person for the role, there is now a lot of public opinion swelling that he's at the right

00:29:07 ◼   ► choice and Chris Sacker doing what he's done is now painting investor opinion.

00:29:15 ◼   ► which is part of his game all along, I think.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Yes.

00:29:19 ◼   ► What a great way of putting it.

00:29:21 ◼   ► - But I will say, I think Saka is legitimately a believer

00:29:25 ◼   ► in the power of Twitter and the potential of that company.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And like we said on the last show,

00:29:30 ◼   ► I really do believe that Jack Dorsey cares about Twitter

00:29:34 ◼   ► and has some feelings about what Twitter could do better.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And like I said, I don't know the personalities

00:29:39 ◼   ► and I don't know the inside of how Twitter is working

00:29:42 ◼   ► and how it's broken.

00:29:43 ◼   ► So I can't say, I'm not gonna be one of those people that says,

00:29:46 ◼   ► well, he should totally get the job because, you know, reasons,

00:29:49 ◼   ► because, uh, it's way more complicated than that.

00:29:51 ◼   ► There may be somebody who's a much better choice.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Um, but what I would say is somebody who cares about Twitter needs to be in

00:29:58 ◼   ► charge of Twitter, somebody who is willing to make big changes and fix what

00:30:03 ◼   ► has been broken and get this company that's product has been really complacent

00:30:07 ◼   ► for too long, uh, moving in some direction, um, somewhere and, you know,

00:30:12 ◼   ► we might not all even like the direction it goes, but it needs to go somewhere because

00:30:16 ◼   ► it just seems mired and has been mired for the last few years. And Jack Dorsey does seem

00:30:21 ◼   ► to care about it. And so, you know, I would rather have somebody like Jack Dorsey than,

00:30:27 ◼   ► you know, Dick Costolo. And, but he might not be the best choice, but he's definitely

00:30:32 ◼   ► a high profile choice as the co-founder and as being, you know, mooted for the job by

00:30:36 ◼   ► people who probably know better than we do about the details.

00:30:41 ◼   ► So I think now that now this public opinion is swelling I think that Jack is the right

00:30:48 ◼   ► person I think that part of it is people just like the beauty of the story.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Well sure it's that Steve Jobs story right founder returns he was kind of kind of kicked

00:30:58 ◼   ► out he's brought back in you know again all of us on the outside people who don't have

00:31:04 ◼   ► inside knowledge of Jack of Twitter of the what you know what happened when Dick Costolo

00:31:09 ◼   ► was there, what's going on with the product, all of these product people left. That's the

00:31:14 ◼   ► other thing that happened after we recorded that episode is that even when we recorded

00:31:19 ◼   ► it I know at least one product person had left but then it was reported that like three

00:31:23 ◼   ► more product people at Twitter had left that week. It was like this exodus of people from

00:31:29 ◼   ► Twitter and so you know something needs to happen but we don't know unless you're one

00:31:35 ◼   ► of the people who knows the inside, it's all just a guess. You know, it's, it's, none of

00:31:40 ◼   ► us really know unless you're on the inside.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I think that just what is, I think, clear at the moment, to me anyway, is that whether

00:31:52 ◼   ► Dorsey is the right man to solve the problems, I think he is the right man to be there to,

00:32:02 ◼   ► or the right person, I should say,

00:32:04 ◼   ► he's the right person now to be there

00:32:07 ◼   ► to help do a public image reset from Costolo's time.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And we talk about Costolo in bad terms,

00:32:18 ◼   ► neither of us really know how much control he had.

00:32:22 ◼   ► However, it was under his time that things went really bad.

00:32:26 ◼   ► But the best we can do is just be like,

00:32:29 ◼   ► Well, he may have been who was put in place

00:32:34 ◼   ► to be the person at the time.

00:32:35 ◼   ► He may have never been the right person or the wrong person

00:32:38 ◼   ► and that may not have been his fault decision

00:32:41 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:32:42 ◼   ► However, that all we know is what we can see

00:32:45 ◼   ► and all we could see was that the product became worse

00:32:48 ◼   ► during the time that he was CEO.

00:32:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:32:51 ◼   ► And that it, that they seem to miss a lot of opportunities

00:32:55 ◼   ► and kind of lose their way

00:32:57 ◼   ► in terms of what they were doing, that they made some tough decisions early on that were

00:33:03 ◼   ► unpopular but could have been mitigated by having results from those decisions, and a

00:33:09 ◼   ► lot of those results never seemed to come.

00:33:12 ◼   ► And yeah, but we -- right, we don't know.

00:33:14 ◼   ► What we do know is the outcome, right?

00:33:16 ◼   ► We know what Twitter has not done over the last few years.

00:33:21 ◼   ► That much is clear.

00:33:22 ◼   ► That, you know, it's pretty clear that they've missed a lot of opportunities the last few

00:33:27 ◼   ► years. So something else that happened really interestingly I think yesterday

00:33:32 ◼   ► as we record this on Monday the... It's Tuesday. Oh it happened on Monday the

00:33:39 ◼   ► 10th. Yeah when we should have been recording but weren't. So Dorsey spent

00:33:45 ◼   ► $875,000 to buy 31,000 shares in Twitter and he sent out a tweet which was had a

00:33:53 ◼   ► a picture or had a link to his SEC filing and the tweet just said investing

00:33:59 ◼   ► in Twitter's future. So he bought a massive chunk of stock. Now he already

00:34:05 ◼   ► owns a massive chunk of stock anyway and this is actually a small amount compared

00:34:11 ◼   ► to the overall amount of stock that he owns already but this came at a time

00:34:18 ◼   ► where over the last, he owns 22 million shares and he bought another 31,000 so

00:34:26 ◼   ► yeah not huge. It's symbolic. But it's exactly it. It was the symbol because

00:34:33 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks since the earnings call Twitter's stock has just

00:34:39 ◼   ► been tumbling and they are now below IPO level. I think they IPO'd at $40 a

00:34:49 ◼   ► share something like that and now they're at like they're in the mid to

00:34:55 ◼   ► high 20s region at the moment and so this is kind of there have been a lot of

00:35:02 ◼   ► people talking this week who's gonna buy them. A lot of people have been pointing

00:35:06 ◼   ► at Google and we'll talk about that in a minute but lots of people have been

00:35:11 ◼   ► trying, have been eyeing up potential companies to buy Twitter so I think that

00:35:16 ◼   ► what Dorsey is trying to show here is that he believes in the company and

00:35:21 ◼   ► wants the company to remain so he's putting his money where where his mouth

00:35:24 ◼   ► is. Yeah that's the symbolism of it is that companies that are going that are

00:35:31 ◼   ► falling apart people are selling their shares so they can get they can cash out

00:35:34 ◼   ► before it all falls apart.

00:35:36 ◼   ► And he's sending a signal like,

00:35:37 ◼   ► "I'm investing in Twitter's future."

00:35:39 ◼   ► It does feel like he's also sending a signal saying,

00:35:41 ◼   ► "I wanna be a part of Twitter's future."

00:35:43 ◼   ► Right?

00:35:44 ◼   ► - Oh, 100%.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Yeah, this is as much a PR move for Jack as a CEO,

00:35:49 ◼   ► as it is him believing in it.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Like I think you can hold those two things as exclusive,

00:35:58 ◼   ► but they are mutually exclusive.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Like they are, these are things

00:36:02 ◼   ► that he believes both of these, in my opinion. It is a PR move to try and show that he's

00:36:08 ◼   ► the right visionary for the role, but also he is genuinely saying that he believes in

00:36:14 ◼   ► it and wants it to stick around.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, I guess we'll see what happens. Something is happening at Twitter, right?

00:36:22 ◼   ► Change is happening at Twitter. It's happening right now. We've seen it. There may be jockeying

00:36:27 ◼   ► for position, it may not be exactly what we expect, but we know, and with those departures

00:36:35 ◼   ► too, we know that there's a lot of change happening there. And I gotta say, again, as

00:36:40 ◼   ► an outsider, I think it's good because it's change. Because what Twitter has been doing

00:36:46 ◼   ► has not been working. So change it up, you know, and hopefully they will make good decisions

00:36:51 ◼   ► and they will change it in good ways, but they gotta change it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that this is the...

00:36:59 ◼   ► I continue that I think that Dorsey's the right person because I think that they need

00:37:05 ◼   ► a CEO that has a name to them.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Promoting another type like Costolo who is not known to the wider community is probably

00:37:18 ◼   ► a bad move, especially when now they need to be able to attract talent to head up some

00:37:24 ◼   ► of their C-level positions, I guess.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a major platform company and the job of the CEO isn't just to be, you know,

00:37:33 ◼   ► isn't to be the strategist in some ways.

00:37:35 ◼   ► The job is to build a team that can execute on the strategy and formulate the strategy

00:37:40 ◼   ► and you know, that's a job, that's a big job and so I don't feel like you need somebody

00:37:46 ◼   ► big because of PR reasons because it needs to be recognizable and send a message to the

00:37:49 ◼   ► shareholders.

00:37:50 ◼   ► may be true too. I think the big thing is you need somebody who is of a stature in Silicon

00:37:58 ◼   ► Valley that they are going to be able to build a team and recruit people and get a really

00:38:03 ◼   ► good team in place and energize the people who are already there and they need to know

00:38:08 ◼   ► the landscape. So I think that's the most important thing is if you've got somebody

00:38:11 ◼   ► who nobody ever heard of, that's the danger there is that this is the captain of the ship

00:38:17 ◼   ► and you need somebody like when Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer, right? I mean, you want somebody

00:38:22 ◼   ► that people know and who's worked with lots of good people all over the industry and that's

00:38:29 ◼   ► what you want in a job of a CEO of a company as important as Twitter.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Should we take a break? I think that's a good idea.

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00:41:26 ◼   ► Hooray. So alphabet,

00:41:31 ◼   ► This was one of the most surprising tech news stories I've ever seen, I think.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Basically, okay, so people are saying Google renamed themselves to Alphabet yesterday,

00:41:47 ◼   ► which isn't technically what they did.

00:41:51 ◼   ► They created New Google, which is run by a company called Alphabet.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Google. This is gonna get real complicated real fast. Okay yeah I will

00:42:03 ◼   ► refer to from here on out we will refer to it as old Google and new Google. Okay.

00:42:08 ◼   ► So old Google no longer exists. Now old Google was a company which owned all of

00:42:16 ◼   ► the things that you know of as Google. Search, apps, owns Android, YouTube, Nest

00:42:24 ◼   ► all of those things, that company's gone away.

00:42:28 ◼   ► What stands in its place is Alphabet.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Alphabet owns the new Google,

00:42:33 ◼   ► which is now going to be run by new CEO Sundar Pichai,

00:42:38 ◼   ► which we'll get to in a minute.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Alphabet itself is going to be run by CEO Sergey Brin

00:42:44 ◼   ► and Larry Page as president.

00:42:48 ◼   ► And Alphabet is a collection of companies,

00:42:51 ◼   ► the largest of which is the new Google.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So for example--

00:42:55 ◼   ► This is a separation of sort of like Larry and Sergey's

00:42:58 ◼   ► big playground, which is Google.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And now what we've got is Larry and Sergey's big playground

00:43:04 ◼   ► is Alphabet.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And one of the things in the playground is Google.

00:43:08 ◼   ► What a great way of putting it.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Right?

00:43:10 ◼   ► Because we've always heard about Larry and Sergey are like,

00:43:13 ◼   ► oh, we've got big ideas and crazy things that we're

00:43:15 ◼   ► going to do.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And we're going to buy this, and we're going to integrate that,

00:43:17 ◼   ► and we're going to invest in this.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And then there was like the Google

00:43:20 ◼   ► that is search engine and Android.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And what this does that I really like is separate those.

00:43:26 ◼   ► So they're not like independent of each other.

00:43:30 ◼   ► The playground, Google's in the playground,

00:43:32 ◼   ► but like we no longer have this concept

00:43:34 ◼   ► where there's like, there's Google

00:43:35 ◼   ► and then there's like the Googly part of Google.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Now we have Alphabet

00:43:40 ◼   ► and then Google is one of the things in Alphabet.

00:43:43 ◼   ► - Yep, so for example, Sundar Pichai,

00:43:45 ◼   ► who is the CEO of the new Google,

00:43:47 ◼   ► will, he will actually report into the CEO of Alphabet,

00:43:52 ◼   ► which is bright, which is weird for a CEO to report to someone.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Well, I mean, CEOs report to the board, right?

00:43:59 ◼   ► I mean, yeah.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And so in this case, they're--

00:44:01 ◼   ► and they're actually my president of--

00:44:04 ◼   ► back at IDG, reported to the CEO of the parent company.

00:44:08 ◼   ► This is a--

00:44:09 ◼   ► I mean, that's how it works.

00:44:10 ◼   ► These are like divisions.

00:44:12 ◼   ► These are wholly owned and operated companies

00:44:16 ◼   ► within a portfolio.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And so that's the structure, which is-- actually,

00:44:18 ◼   ► it's kind of nice, right?

00:44:19 ◼   ► Sundar is the, you know, is the CEO of Google and needs to make the decisions about what Google

00:44:25 ◼   ► does and Google is a very clearly like, this is your territory, you run this and then the big boss

00:44:31 ◼   ► instead of having a board, they may have a board but I, you know, basically the the they answer to

00:44:35 ◼   ► Larry and Sergey, which is that that's good. I think that's clear. There is still some weirdness

00:44:43 ◼   ► though in what is part of the new Google? Yeah. So like some of the stuff they took

00:44:49 ◼   ► out so they took out Nest which why now when you look back you can see why they

00:44:56 ◼   ► didn't rename some of the companies they bought more recently. Yeah well Nest yeah

00:45:01 ◼   ► I feel like that was always their intent was not to subsume it into Google and

00:45:05 ◼   ► they wanted Nest and the Nest brand to continue and they wanted their home

00:45:08 ◼   ► efforts to be around Nest and there was always that confusion I think we talked

00:45:12 ◼   ► about it during the Google I/O keynote aftermath was this confusion about the home networking

00:45:21 ◼   ► stuff that Google is putting forth that's going to be a part of Android and then what

00:45:24 ◼   ► the Nest home networking program is. Are they the same? Are they not the same? Why would

00:45:31 ◼   ► they not be the same? That one makes a lot of sense. I think actually it will be great

00:45:37 ◼   ► for Nest because then Tony Fidell runs Nest. And he reports to Larry and Sergey. He has

00:45:44 ◼   ► nothing to do with Sundar, and he can make his own way, and he can start counteracting

00:45:52 ◼   ► the complaints from people saying, "Why would I want to buy home products from Google, and

00:45:59 ◼   ► they're going to take all my information and feed them into Google?" Because now he can

00:46:02 ◼   ► say, "Nope, that's not our business. That's not why we're here. We don't give any of that

00:46:05 ◼   ► to Google, that's not our company. And that's good. That's like that's that and

00:46:10 ◼   ► that may have been true before but it's clearer now that Nest is Nest and not

00:46:15 ◼   ► Google. But then parts like the Google Ventures and Google Capital are now just

00:46:21 ◼   ► ventures and capital. They're gonna be part of Alphabet. X, Google X is now X

00:46:26 ◼   ► Labs. Right, which is the crazy, that's the crazy far-out stuff you know robots and

00:46:32 ◼   ► and self-driving cars and things like that.

00:46:35 ◼   ► - And then Google Fiber is now just Alphabet Fiber

00:46:40 ◼   ► or just Fiber?

00:46:41 ◼   ► - I think that's one of the questions is,

00:46:42 ◼   ► are these gonna be rebranded?

00:46:43 ◼   ► Is Google Ventures gonna become Alphabet Ventures

00:46:46 ◼   ► or is it just going to be Google Ventures

00:46:47 ◼   ► and it's not part of Google, it's Google Ventures

00:46:51 ◼   ► and it's a different thing.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I think there's some questions over time.

00:46:53 ◼   ► - That'd be madness if they did that.

00:46:55 ◼   ► - Well, I think, yeah, I think it would be much better

00:46:58 ◼   ► if it was Alphabet Ventures, Alphabet Capital

00:47:00 ◼   ► and we started thinking of Alphabet as the thing

00:47:02 ◼   ► But they, you know, Larry and Sergey have said, you know, that Alphabet is not necessarily

00:47:06 ◼   ► a consumer-facing brand.

00:47:07 ◼   ► If that's true, maybe Google Ventures will come up with its own name, you know, that's

00:47:12 ◼   ► not Google Ventures, that's some other, you know, indecipherable Silicon Valley venture

00:47:18 ◼   ► capital company name.

00:47:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:47:22 ◼   ► That part I don't know.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:24 ◼   ► And so...

00:47:25 ◼   ► Have you ever had the Alphabet fiber cereal?

00:47:29 ◼   ► It's not very good.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Never heard of it.

00:47:32 ◼   ► alphabet fiber? I've had alphabeti spaghetti. It's not real, I just made it up but it sounds

00:47:35 ◼   ► like cereal. It's very high in fiber, it's brand, but shaped in the shape of letters.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Alphabet fiber. Or just alphabeti spaghetti. Okay. If it's whole grain, then it would be

00:47:47 ◼   ► alphabet fiber. Spaghetti. So, YouTube and Android are remaining part of Google. This

00:47:57 ◼   ► I don't understand. Well, YouTube I understand because YouTube is an advertising play, you

00:48:02 ◼   ► know. It's all about the video advertising. And so that makes sense to me that it's part

00:48:08 ◼   ► of Google because, and it's so tightly integrated now, even though they're trying to unwind

00:48:12 ◼   ► it a little bit, in the end it's about programmatic advertising and what is Google but advertising

00:48:17 ◼   ► at this point. But like, YouTube has had its own CEO for a long time. That's like something

00:48:22 ◼   ► that I find so it's just very I actually weirdly more understand Android being a

00:48:28 ◼   ► part of Google then YouTube being part of Google which is funny because I think

00:48:32 ◼   ► you're the other way around. Some of some of this might be about the way that

00:48:39 ◼   ► they're technically intertwined and some of this may be about their feeling about

00:48:44 ◼   ► the directions these businesses are going in and you know I don't know

00:48:48 ◼   ► because again not on the inside but I look at this and think you know they may

00:48:52 ◼   ► say look, Google as a search engine text ad product, that's kind of going to fade away

00:48:58 ◼   ► eventually, but you know, it's going to move to video and what's video? Well, it's YouTube

00:49:02 ◼   ► and we've got YouTube and they're all part of the same thing and they're all part of

00:49:05 ◼   ► the same infrastructure and even though users see them as different products and they're

00:49:09 ◼   ► actually you know, they've made that more separate, you don't need it, I think you don't

00:49:13 ◼   ► need the Google login to post hateful comments on YouTube anymore.

00:49:18 ◼   ► That's for sure.

00:49:19 ◼   ► they're splitting those apart. They may view that as being essentially the same business,

00:49:27 ◼   ► that like this part of the business and this part of the business are different, but they're

00:49:29 ◼   ► not that different, they really go together. In a way, and Android is the same question,

00:49:35 ◼   ► it's like, I look at that and think, well, Android is, I agree with you, kind of weird

00:49:40 ◼   ► to be part of Google at the same time, though, why does Android exist? Why does it exist?

00:49:51 ◼   ► It's free, right? I mean, they put huge amount of engineering resources in it and they give

00:49:55 ◼   ► it away. Why do they do that? It's because they want to capture a percentage of the market

00:50:00 ◼   ► that they can use as part of Google's strategy for advertising. Because they never want to

00:50:06 ◼   ► live in a world where Apple dominated or Microsoft dominated mobile advertising because they

00:50:09 ◼   ► could be locked out and now they can't be locked out because they give this

00:50:13 ◼   ► thing away and then and they're integrated into it. Well by that standard

00:50:19 ◼   ► Android absolutely is part of Google and if you separate an Android into Android

00:50:24 ◼   ► Incorporated wouldn't that be weird to have this company that just created this

00:50:29 ◼   ► thing that they gave away and was always operated at a massive loss because the

00:50:34 ◼   ► whole goal was to make profits happen somewhere else. So I think it fits. Also I saw somebody

00:50:43 ◼   ► on Twitter say that this is just a big tax thing. This is all about things like taxes

00:50:51 ◼   ► and maybe saving on taxes and also being able to kind of like send messages to investors

00:50:58 ◼   ► and the public about how profitable the core part of Google is versus the playground. But

00:51:04 ◼   ► I don't, I am not a tax attorney, a corporate tax attorney, so I don't know about that conspiracy

00:51:10 ◼   ► here.

00:51:11 ◼   ► It doesn't seem right to me because it's all going to be owned by Alphabet in the same

00:51:14 ◼   ► way that it was all owned by Google.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I mean, it may be structured differently, who knows, but I love it from a clarity standpoint

00:51:23 ◼   ► though.

00:51:24 ◼   ► I mean, I've said on this show many times and on other shows and I've written about

00:51:26 ◼   ► it, I have for a long time talked about the two Googles, right?

00:51:30 ◼   ► There's the Google that is what we know as Google, what we think of as Google, which

00:51:35 ◼   ► is search and Android and YouTube.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And then there's what I just called earlier the playground.

00:51:42 ◼   ► It's the stuff where Larry and Sergey are trying to imagine what the next big things

00:51:48 ◼   ► are and use the money from search advertising to fund investment in these other crazy areas,

00:51:58 ◼   ► figuring that they may be able to control the future of the car or the future of robots

00:52:02 ◼   ► or the future of biotech or whatever it is, the bets that they're placing.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And so there's this really down to business money making run by lawyers, hard to work

00:52:13 ◼   ► with company that's called Google.

00:52:16 ◼   ► And then there's the big ideas company.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And then you throw in acquisitions like Nest and you're like, okay, I don't even know,

00:52:22 ◼   ► is that in the box?

00:52:23 ◼   ► Is that out of the box?

00:52:24 ◼   ► What's that about?

00:52:26 ◼   ► And now I feel like this is much clearer that there is this huge engine of money that is

00:52:36 ◼   ► driven by advertising, which is Google.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And then there's all the other stuff.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And all the other stuff is the speculative stuff that is in the playground, is in Larry

00:52:45 ◼   ► and Sergey's playground.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And that includes Nest, which I think is a bet on smart home technology, is essentially

00:52:52 ◼   ► what that is.

00:52:53 ◼   ► a bet about investing in the future of something just like the self-driving cars are, just

00:53:00 ◼   ► with a product so it's a little closer to reality than something like the self-driving

00:53:04 ◼   ► cars are. So I like that. This is them making clear that Google is not one thing and that

00:53:10 ◼   ► there are at least two and maybe many more parts of Google that have totally different

00:53:16 ◼   ► purposes. So I like that about it too because that's been true. It's always been true and

00:53:21 ◼   ► And yet people got confused, they're like, "Why is a search engine building self-driving

00:53:25 ◼   ► cars and investing in robots and hiring all the robot engineers?"

00:53:29 ◼   ► The answer is the search engine wasn't doing that.

00:53:32 ◼   ► That was Larry and Sergey who want to invest in robots and self-driving cars and not the

00:53:39 ◼   ► poor people working on the search engines and on Android who don't get to play with

00:53:43 ◼   ► robots, they just have to work on their software.

00:53:45 ◼   ► So now that's Sundar's part of the business.

00:53:48 ◼   ► He can worry about it.

00:53:50 ◼   ► There's one thing that I wonder about this, that this decoupling of Google from everything

00:53:56 ◼   ► else makes me think that Alphabet could make more Facebook-like acquisitions where they

00:54:04 ◼   ► buy a company because they think it's interesting, or for whatever reason, but then it doesn't

00:54:10 ◼   ► have to, like it can do a similar thing to Google, but it doesn't have to be rolled into

00:54:15 ◼   ► Google.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Well Nest, Nest is the model for this.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Nest, I really believe that Google looked at Nest,

00:54:21 ◼   ► that Larry and Sergey looked at Nest and said,

00:54:24 ◼   ► "I really like what they're doing.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Tony Fidele is really brilliant.

00:54:30 ◼   ► They could probably change the world

00:54:32 ◼   ► if they weren't struggling as a startup

00:54:34 ◼   ► and got a huge influx of cash.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Why don't we just buy them and give them some money

00:54:40 ◼   ► and let them really blow people away with their technology?"

00:54:43 ◼   ► I think that's the story of them buying Nest.

00:54:46 ◼   ► So they could do that again.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And you're right, I think this gives Google the freedom

00:54:50 ◼   ► to acquire things that are core to Google,

00:54:52 ◼   ► and it gives Alphabet the freedom to acquire things

00:54:55 ◼   ► that are not core to Google, but that are like good bets,

00:54:58 ◼   ► and that go beyond the ventures thing, right?

00:55:01 ◼   ► 'Cause ventures, they could just invest in something,

00:55:04 ◼   ► but this is like buying it, just outright.

00:55:08 ◼   ► This is not a good example, but if they said,

00:55:11 ◼   ► "Oh, we get it now, TiVo is really great.

00:55:14 ◼   ► "We're just gonna buy TiVo."

00:55:16 ◼   ► And there wouldn't be the question of like,

00:55:17 ◼   ► like how does TiVo fit in with Google?

00:55:18 ◼   ► The answer is, well, no, we just bought it

00:55:20 ◼   ► because we wanna do something.

00:55:21 ◼   ► You know, we want it to do whatever TV things.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Like I said, it's a bad example,

00:55:26 ◼   ► but just to pick a company, that could happen, right?

00:55:29 ◼   ► That kind of thing could happen.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And it doesn't get all muddied in,

00:55:34 ◼   ► what does that mean for Google?

00:55:35 ◼   ► Like it's not, it doesn't mean anything for Google.

00:55:37 ◼   ► If Google buys it, you'll know it's Google buying it.

00:55:39 ◼   ► If Alphabet buys it, you'll know it's not Google buying it.

00:55:43 ◼   ► - So a lot of people are asking the question,

00:55:46 ◼   ► Could Alphabet buy Twitter now?

00:55:48 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:55:51 ◼   ► Sure they could.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Sure.

00:55:54 ◼   ► They really could.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It would not shock me if you saw Alphabet make some...

00:56:02 ◼   ► You know, this happens a lot, where companies buy other companies because they don't want their competition to get them.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Not because... I mean Nest, I feel like in some ways that's what Nest was.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Nest was. Yeah that's what I meant by the Facebook model as well like Facebook

00:56:17 ◼   ► Instagram or whatsapp to protect Facebook. To protect Facebook right yeah

00:56:21 ◼   ► yeah Facebook wanted Instagram not because Facebook needed Instagram to be

00:56:24 ◼   ► in Facebook but because Instagram needed to not belong to their competitors. Yep

00:56:29 ◼   ► and also like but the different one though is Oculus, Zuckerberg bought

00:56:35 ◼   ► Oculus because he missed out on mobile like that was his reason like was he

00:56:40 ◼   ► He bought Oculus because Facebook missed on mobile and they should have been ahead of

00:56:44 ◼   ► mobile so he bought what he thought was the next big thing.

00:56:48 ◼   ► He bought the leader in that so he bought Oculus, which is very smart.

00:56:51 ◼   ► No, that's a great, Oculus is a great example of somebody's going to snap this up and we

00:56:57 ◼   ► think it's big and you know if anybody's going to own it it's us.

00:57:01 ◼   ► But in sometimes, I think smart business people look at acquisitions and realize that the

00:57:08 ◼   ► The dream of taking some amazing product and integrating it into your product is a little

00:57:13 ◼   ► bit false, and that really you've got two choices, which is you can swallow it whole

00:57:20 ◼   ► and break it up into pieces and hopefully use the pieces, and that means the technology,

00:57:24 ◼   ► the patents, the people, to build something good for your core business.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Or you realize this thing works because of the way it's structured, and we just want

00:57:37 ◼   ► it to stay around and we can help it be better and we can integrate it a little bit like

00:57:42 ◼   ► I feel like those are more realistic acquisition scenarios and that the second one doesn't

00:57:48 ◼   ► really happen unless you are a company with just money coming out your ears which you

00:57:52 ◼   ► know Facebook, Google, Apple, those companies actually they could just buy whatever. Most

00:58:00 ◼   ► companies like are much more tactical and Apple actually behaves I think more like a

00:58:03 ◼   ► small company that tactically buys things. It's rare that they make a huge purchase.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And we'll have to see how the Beats acquisition goes in the long term, right? I mean, this

00:58:11 ◼   ► is one of those arguments, is in the end, did Apple get much out of Beats other than

00:58:17 ◼   ► breaking it down, you know, breaking the music service down to its constituent parts and

00:58:21 ◼   ► trying to integrate it into iTunes, and that may turn out to be, you know, not much. Or

00:58:27 ◼   ► it may turn out to be something good, but it may turn out to be nothing, because it's

00:58:30 ◼   ► hard to integrate those things. But there's this whole scenario of like, let's just buy

00:58:35 ◼   ► it and keep it over there. And then, you know, it'll be friendly to us because we own it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► And if one of them wins, we've already, we got both. Like, you know, you're hedging your

00:58:47 ◼   ► bets.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Instagram, Oculus is a good bet on the future. Instagram is a great hedge against your competition

00:58:52 ◼   ► taking this thing that is great and and using it to compete with you. That's a great example

00:59:01 ◼   ► of that where Facebook's like, well, what what is one of the things that is incredibly

00:59:05 ◼   ► powerful for our service? It's photos. What's a danger? Well, Instagram is really great

00:59:09 ◼   ► for photos too. Well, if we buy Instagram and kill it, that doesn't solve anything.

00:59:15 ◼   ► And if we buy Instagram and integrate into Facebook, that doesn't really solve anything.

00:59:19 ◼   ► we could just buy Instagram and make the links with Facebook really good and let Instagram

00:59:23 ◼   ► be great on its own. And that's alphabet is structured like that. It's totally structured

00:59:28 ◼   ► like that. So could they buy Twitter if they think that that Twitter is a good idea that

00:59:34 ◼   ► just needs to be under new management and and have more cash to fulfill their vision,

00:59:40 ◼   ► then maybe so it's a public company. So it gets complicated. I worry that the Twitter

00:59:46 ◼   ► Twitter is just too far down the road. There's been too much water under the bridge for Twitter

00:59:52 ◼   ► to be something that could get sucked in. I think Twitter would have to be laid pretty

00:59:56 ◼   ► low. I think that confidence in it in the stock market would have to decrease and for

01:00:02 ◼   ► it to be something where somebody would want to pick it up and say, "Well, we think we

01:00:06 ◼   ► can rehab this and there's good stuff here." And Twitter doesn't seem to be in that place

01:00:10 ◼   ► right now.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So, Alphabet, it's crazy. It is crazy. I think it's very exciting though.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Oztamir in the chat room said, "I'm still waiting to see if the next acquisition will

01:00:22 ◼   ► pay off for Apple." That's a great example of something that's just getting broken down

01:00:27 ◼   ► and absorbed. And in the end, you know, Apple is as much next -- Apple's technologies are

01:00:33 ◼   ► like, basically next technologies more than their Apple technologies from that period

01:00:38 ◼   ► anyway. But I'm with you. Alphabet, I think it's a great idea and we'll see how they put

01:00:43 ◼   ► it into practice. But I just like the clarity of it. I like that, I mean, look, Google conspiracy

01:00:49 ◼   ► theories will always exist, but it feels like there's some clarity of communication. Like

01:00:54 ◼   ► this is what Google is now and this is what Google is not now. And so when you hear a

01:00:59 ◼   ► story about the crazy self-driving cars or investing in robots or building an army of

01:01:05 ◼   ► drones or whatever, to have that not be Google, I think it's good. I think it's good to be

01:01:12 ◼   ► clear that that's not Google. That is Larry and Sergey building drones as part of their

01:01:19 ◼   ► private army.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And I genuinely believe that they will want to be as not involved in Google as possible.

01:01:26 ◼   ► Like, just so boring, go away, I want to go to the moon. And I think that's where they

01:01:32 ◼   ► are.

01:01:33 ◼   ► give me money. I think that's kind of it, right, with Google. It's like, look, we built

01:01:38 ◼   ► a machine, accidentally at Stanford, we built a machine that prints money. Keep writing

01:01:45 ◼   ► the checks, folks. Sundar, keep it going, we'll check in, love what you're doing, love

01:01:50 ◼   ► the product, don't get me wrong, love the product, but just keep writing the checks

01:01:55 ◼   ► so that we can go play over here and this stuff and change the future. You're not about

01:01:58 ◼   ► the future, except in your little area, you're about making us money. It will be interesting

01:02:04 ◼   ► to see how that goes over with people who work at Google, that there's that, you know,

01:02:08 ◼   ► that that Google is no longer this entity that is, you know, anything can happen. It's,

01:02:13 ◼   ► you know, Google, new Google is we're about this. Maybe that's good. That's a focusing

01:02:21 ◼   ► thing, but it does sort of change things. And I do think that the attitude is very much

01:02:24 ◼   ► like just keep giving this money so that we can invest in more self-driving cars.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And I love me some Sundar Pichai. I think he's awesome. Yeah I think he's a

01:02:34 ◼   ► smart guy and I think you know having that gives some clarity too doesn't it

01:02:39 ◼   ► it's like all the stuff here is you that's it like that's you it's you talk

01:02:45 ◼   ► to us we're your bosses up here but that is your business not Android not Google

01:02:50 ◼   ► not YouTube, all of it. If it's in Google, it's yours. Make it good.

01:02:57 ◼   ► That's great. And send the checks. Because we got to buy some new

01:03:02 ◼   ► self-driving cars. Doesn't hurt to have a non-white guy as a CEO of one of the

01:03:07 ◼   ► big three tech companies as well. I feel like, well, yeah, one more, right?

01:03:14 ◼   ► Because we already have Satya Nadella. Of course we do, yeah. Right? So, in fact,

01:03:19 ◼   ► for probably a conversation for another time but I'm sure some tech magazine or

01:03:26 ◼   ► even general interest magazine or website you know probably like a Time

01:03:31 ◼   ► magazine cover that everybody goes Time magazine still being published but but

01:03:34 ◼   ► will be somebody will do a big feature or takeout or what does it all mean

01:03:37 ◼   ► thing about this being another chapter in the rise of non-white workers,

01:03:50 ◼   ► especially Asian workers in Silicon Valley, to even more positions of

01:03:55 ◼   ► prominence. And you know Sundar Pichai is another example of that, Satya Nadella

01:04:02 ◼   ► is an example of that. And you know that has been, the workforce has been

01:04:07 ◼   ► composed in the Silicon Valley workforce has been, if there's diversity from the white

01:04:13 ◼   ► people in it, there are lots of Asian people who from all over Asia, from all the way from

01:04:19 ◼   ► India to China and Japan in the valley, but now we are seeing them increasingly in these

01:04:27 ◼   ► prominent positions. And it's just interesting. It's like maybe it took time for that to all

01:04:35 ◼   ► just kind of like keep rolling but I think it's great to see and and so now

01:04:41 ◼   ► we have Sundar in charge of Google I think I think it's a yeah he's a smart

01:04:45 ◼   ► guy he's she's sharp guy and I think he will benefit from having clarity over

01:04:50 ◼   ► his domain now yep no doubt thank you send him a tweet did you see the tweet I

01:04:57 ◼   ► did see the tweet congratulations on your promotion oh and then he was like

01:05:02 ◼   ► Thanks, thanks man.

01:05:04 ◼   ► You know, there is this part of me that does really love that like

01:05:08 ◼   ► Microsoft is run by a guy of Indian descent.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Actually, yeah, both Nadella and Pachai were both born in India.

01:05:19 ◼   ► So then you have the leader of Google was born in India

01:05:24 ◼   ► and then the leader of Apple is openly homosexual. I think it's fantastic.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I love that. I just think that is such a great thing that even five years ago we may have

01:05:35 ◼   ► found to be strange, right? To hear, like really?

01:05:38 ◼   ► Well Silicon Valley diversity is problematic in a lot of ways. A lot of ways. But at least

01:05:45 ◼   ► we can point to a major gay executive, a couple major Indian executives. If you want to throw

01:05:54 ◼   ► in Yahoo, you've got a major woman executive and HP has had a woman CEO and there's some

01:06:02 ◼   ► of that's going on.

01:06:05 ◼   ► And you're right, five years ago, well, five years ago it was Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer

01:06:10 ◼   ► and Steve Jobs, right, in those parts, in those roles.

01:06:13 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and like you know, we're saying about we know that diversity isn't great, like we

01:06:18 ◼   ► know that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► know that is a thing that I think 2015 will be remembered for is people

01:06:25 ◼   ► realizing a lot of this stuff like actually truly realizing it but one of

01:06:29 ◼   ► the ways it gets better is from the top and also the I know it will be very easy

01:06:37 ◼   ► to say well this is going to be business as usual as Google because in the end

01:06:41 ◼   ► it's still you know it's Sundar and it's still Larry and Sergey running the

01:06:44 ◼   ► running the show from above I don't know this is this is different than Tim Cook

01:06:49 ◼   ► taking over at Apple and this is different than Satya Nadella taking over at Microsoft,

01:06:54 ◼   ► but both of those gentlemen showed that they were not afraid to make change in how their

01:07:00 ◼   ► company had done things over the long term. And I think their companies have benefited

01:07:05 ◼   ► from it. And it will be interesting to see what happens at Google, but I would say it's

01:07:13 ◼   ► more likely than not that Sundar will be able to do this. This will give him, he's been

01:07:17 ◼   ► invested in power with this title and he's been giving clarity about what his business

01:07:21 ◼   ► is. And I think you'll see Google maybe make moves that they would not have made before

01:07:27 ◼   ► when they were this amorphous mass of things and who's in charge of what division. I think

01:07:32 ◼   ► we may see a much more clarity in Google now and coming from letting Sundar make some decisions

01:07:40 ◼   ► about what they're going to do and what they're going to focus on that were harder to make

01:07:43 ◼   ► before when it was this bigger thing and kind of unwieldy.

01:07:46 ◼   ► Should we do some Ask Upgrade?

01:07:49 ◼   ► We should.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Jason, who is bringing Ask Upgrade to the people this week?

01:07:54 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade is being brought to the people by Stamps.com.

01:07:59 ◼   ► You know, we've talked about them before.

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01:08:06 ◼   ► It can feel like a no-win situation.

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01:08:24 ◼   ► want to go there.

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01:08:26 ◼   ► It takes time.

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01:09:14 ◼   ► $15.99 a month. That's it. There's no long-term multi-year commitment like a postage meter.

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01:09:23 ◼   ► Stamps.com, so it's really a no-brainer. I've been using Stamps.com. I've got a really cool

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01:09:31 ◼   ► things up, put it outside, or give it to my letter carrier. They take it away and

01:09:36 ◼   ► that's it. I don't go to the post office. I can ship everything right from here.

01:09:40 ◼   ► And Stamps.com has a special offer for you right now. You can use our promo code,

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01:09:58 ◼   ► click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in "upgrade". That's

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01:10:07 ◼   ► for supporting this show and all of Relay FM and most particularly bringing #AskUpgrade

01:10:13 ◼   ► to the people.

01:10:14 ◼   ► To the people. Power to the people!

01:10:19 ◼   ► So talking about those powerful people, first off Andrew would like to know, "Any thoughts

01:10:26 ◼   ► Jason having been independent for about a year how is the outlook

01:10:30 ◼   ► are your business and personal economics sustainable at their current

01:10:34 ◼   ► uh rate? I think I want to talk about this more in mid-september

01:10:39 ◼   ► when um when it's been a year but the short version is

01:10:43 ◼   ► um I'm having a good time uh the economics seem to be fine

01:10:50 ◼   ► um it is not quite the mix economically than I that I expected I

01:10:55 ◼   ► I have some stuff that is less money than I thought and other stuff that's more money

01:10:59 ◼   ► than I thought.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Not commuting is great and doing this show and other podcast stuff has been a great addition.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I really enjoy having part of my life be doing podcasts, not just for fun but actually as

01:11:14 ◼   ► part of my job.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And so that's my thought about it.

01:11:19 ◼   ► What about you, Myke?

01:11:20 ◼   ► Independent for about a year next week.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Well actually no, no it's we actually I think I quit my job after you.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Well you did but you started Relay before so okay well you know how are you a little

01:11:34 ◼   ► quick super quick status report on you how's it how's your outlook?

01:11:40 ◼   ► Things are really good I mean I make a lot more money just in general which is fantastic

01:11:46 ◼   ► and you know if the money is one of the things and that is a big thing for me but I am happy

01:11:51 ◼   ► I mean the things that I am unhappy about are like just not issues really.

01:11:58 ◼   ► And any of the things that I tend to be unhappy about in my life tend not to be work now.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Which is, you know, I think that's rare for most people and definitely rare for me having

01:12:08 ◼   ► looked over the last five years of my life.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I am very happy.

01:12:12 ◼   ► My main problem is just trying to balance my time and I've been making some steps along

01:12:19 ◼   ► that road recently but I've got some other things coming up that are going to take that

01:12:23 ◼   ► away again so I'm just trying to balance things out a bit better to try and better understand

01:12:29 ◼   ► where my time is going, where my money is coming from and just trying to build not a

01:12:36 ◼   ► better work-life balance per se but a better balance in my work.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm having the exact same issues now which is now I've reached the point where

01:12:46 ◼   ► I have to make some decisions about what do I spend my time working on because I'm fortunate

01:12:52 ◼   ► in that I have more potential work than I can do. So I need to choose. I need to make

01:12:59 ◼   ► smart decisions about what I do and what I say no to, where I choose to put my time,

01:13:03 ◼   ► and then how I structure my time. And that's all going on. So that's a whole other level

01:13:08 ◼   ► beyond the basic level, which is, you know, "Oh God, is this going to work? Am I not going

01:13:13 ◼   ► to have any money, am I going to have to start applying for jobs anywhere because I just,

01:13:20 ◼   ► you know, I can't pay my mortgage payment. That's not been the case, but that leads to

01:13:26 ◼   ► that other level, which is how do I structure this, how do I make these decisions, you know,

01:13:31 ◼   ► what do I spend my time on, what do I not spend my time on.

01:13:34 ◼   ► >> Yep. So, next up we have a question from John, and this is a Twitter-based question.

01:13:42 ◼   ► John asks if Twitter turned off its feed to the third-party clients that turn off

01:13:46 ◼   ► the API and 100% as of the first of January 2016 do you think this would be

01:13:54 ◼   ► a catalyst for people to leave I think no yeah we've already seen attempts like

01:14:03 ◼   ► when app.net came about it was because Twitter was becoming extremely hostile

01:14:10 ◼   ► and was becoming even more so and we all tried it we all used it and we all went

01:14:18 ◼   ► back to Twitter even though nothing changed so I believe people would just

01:14:23 ◼   ► get used to the official clients and would complain and moan as much as

01:14:28 ◼   ► possible until Twitter actually made some changes that others would want to

01:14:33 ◼   ► see but I just don't see it happening quite simply because the reasons that

01:14:42 ◼   ► other services like app.net didn't stick is because it's not just us anymore and

01:14:48 ◼   ► I think for most of the tech nerds that are on Twitter they probably follow a

01:14:55 ◼   ► bunch of people in their lives or people that they admire or respect that wouldn't

01:14:59 ◼   ► move because they already use the first-party clients, so it's just not a problem.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And I know I don't want to be checking two services.

01:15:09 ◼   ► So I think that the only way that people switch away is if it dies, completely dies.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:15:20 ◼   ► I find great value in third-party clients, and I use a third-party client on iOS, but

01:15:25 ◼   ► I agree with you that realistically pretty much everybody would just switch.

01:15:28 ◼   ► if somebody says, "Well, no, I wouldn't," I would just stop. It's like, "All right,

01:15:31 ◼   ► well, I know that especially some class of tech nerds who've got a third-party client

01:15:36 ◼   ► that they really rely on would get really angry and they would leave, and some of them

01:15:39 ◼   ► might never come back, but others would." For me, you know, the thing that would kill

01:15:43 ◼   ► it for me and make it very hard for me to use Twitter is if they killed, like, the Mac

01:15:49 ◼   ► client, if they just killed it and said, "Just use the website," that would make it very

01:15:55 ◼   ► hard for me, although I would just, you know, again, I would just go on using IOS, I suppose,

01:16:01 ◼   ► at that point. But I don't think that's going to kill Twitter. We are, you liken this to,

01:16:10 ◼   ► you alluded to the idea that we would just kind of go to the official client and complain.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Sometimes I wonder, probably not, but I wonder sometimes if the nerdiest people with the

01:16:19 ◼   ► most attention to detail and the most technology knowledge, if they were using the official

01:16:24 ◼   ► Twitter clients, would Twitter feel more pressure and get more feedback to make their products

01:16:30 ◼   ► better? Probably not, but I do think that there's a whole class of users who would be

01:16:37 ◼   ► really persnickety and finicky and they're power users and they really want Twitter to

01:16:40 ◼   ► be better and they're using third-party clients. And if they were forced into the app, I do

01:16:46 ◼   ► wonder if perhaps Twitter would be like, "Oh, wow, people are really complaining about this

01:16:51 ◼   ► feature and now people are just like "forget it I'll just use this other app that does

01:16:55 ◼   ► it." But this comes back to what we were talking about last time as well which is pick something

01:17:01 ◼   ► Twitter. I feel like the current situation with third parties with these tokens and all

01:17:05 ◼   ► of that, it's an untenable, it feels like a transitional thing and yet it was done by

01:17:11 ◼   ► a group that is no longer basically running Twitter. So I feel like Twitter needs to decide

01:17:16 ◼   ► something. Are you a service that has third-party clients that offer alternatives? If you are,

01:17:24 ◼   ► give them access to in the API to all of your features. If in as we said in exchange for

01:17:31 ◼   ► showing your ads or whatever you have to do, whatever you have to do. If you're not, then

01:17:36 ◼   ► maybe you should just say we're going to close the door because we're in this really weird

01:17:41 ◼   ► situation where, as nice as Twitterific is, as much as people love Tweetbot, they have

01:17:47 ◼   ► limited futures because of the token thing, and limited features because there are all

01:17:53 ◼   ► these Twitter features that do not work on third-party clients because they're not in

01:17:57 ◼   ► the API. So, which is it, Twitter? I feel like that is the most important thing because

01:18:03 ◼   ► right now we're in this weird limbo state, so I don't want them to turn off the feed

01:18:08 ◼   ► to third party clients, I would actually like them to go the other direction and say, "You

01:18:10 ◼   ► know what? Third party clients, help us as a service. Go ahead and make them and make

01:18:16 ◼   ► them good as long as you follow our rules." But if they're not going to do that, I kind

01:18:22 ◼   ► of feel like they should just go the other direction because this limbo state is not

01:18:25 ◼   ► useful for anyone.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Yep, 100%. So Frank asked, "How long do you recommend podcasters keep session files like

01:18:37 ◼   ► logic files or GarageBand files after releasing how do you handle this?

01:18:42 ◼   ► We're gonna get some really different answers. So how do you handle this Myke?

01:18:47 ◼   ► I keep them for a time period until my hard disk starts to fill up and then I

01:18:56 ◼   ► go in and delete the oldest few months. Because for me so many of my shows are

01:19:05 ◼   ► are topical. Yeah, yeah. And they just don't need anything done to them after a certain period of

01:19:12 ◼   ► time. I would imagine you'd keep them behind the app forever. Maybe I should do that. I think you

01:19:20 ◼   ► should. I actually have them saved on a different part of my system so that I have all of the others

01:19:24 ◼   ► go into just a, like just a folder I call podcast scratches, and it just lives there.

01:19:32 ◼   ► yeah i feel like if it's something that could live um longer i think i talked about this before uh

01:19:38 ◼   ► that you should keep them around i keep everything because i've got this drobo that's got a billion

01:19:43 ◼   ► terabytes in it and so it's uh you know i've got the space for them so i save them all um

01:19:49 ◼   ► i would imagine that eventually i will start deleting old you know old clockwise's and old

01:19:56 ◼   ► uh the episodes of upgrade that i've added are less um it's less likely i'm ever going to need

01:20:03 ◼   ► to go back to the masters for any of those you know even if you do a best of um you can pull

01:20:08 ◼   ► from the mp3 file and it sounds fine and and you know i and i don't honestly don't anticipate that

01:20:14 ◼   ► i would do that very much for incomparable because those things last and i'm always pulling things

01:20:19 ◼   ► out for for the end of year recap shows and things like that i keep those around and that allows me

01:20:24 ◼   ► to do things like I generated our Star Wars you know episode 2 and episode 3

01:20:30 ◼   ► episodes I I generated new versions of them you know a few months after we

01:20:36 ◼   ► posted them with you know the like as a special version and total party kill I

01:20:41 ◼   ► did like an audiobook version of one of our seasons and I was able to do all of

01:20:45 ◼   ► that because I kept the Masters around but you know so so somewhere between

01:20:50 ◼   ► until your hard drive I mean really it's until your hard drive fills up I think

01:20:53 ◼   ► is a good answer, but it's more important if it's something that you might actually

01:20:59 ◼   ► need access to later. And some stuff is timeless and some stuff is timely. Like, I would throw

01:21:05 ◼   ► away all my old clockwise's tomorrow if I needed to, but I'm not going to throw away

01:21:08 ◼   ► the incomparable radio theater because I still go back. I actually will still open up radio

01:21:13 ◼   ► theater things. I was doing this the other day because I already have the intro music

01:21:17 ◼   ► for a certain recurring thing, and I can just copy it out of Logic and paste it into a new

01:21:21 ◼   ► project and I get all of the volume and all of the tracks and they're all in the

01:21:26 ◼   ► right sequence so it's great to have that kind of stuff around but for timely

01:21:32 ◼   ► stuff it's a lot less important. And Chalakan asks finally today do you think

01:21:38 ◼   ► Apple will sell curated watch faces on the App Store? This is a really good one

01:21:45 ◼   ► I'm curious about what what you think. Eventually yes they will. Will they do it

01:21:50 ◼   ► anytime soon? I don't think so. Maybe version 3 or 4?

01:21:57 ◼   ► Yeah, right now watch faces for Apple Watch feel like

01:22:01 ◼   ► they're like, you know, the apps that are on your Mac

01:22:05 ◼   ► or on your iPhone that only update when the OS updates.

01:22:09 ◼   ► That's what the watch faces are. It's like they're in the OS. They're part of

01:22:11 ◼   ► the OS. If they want to add new watch faces they will add them in the OS.

01:22:15 ◼   ► I do think that at some point, yeah, they will have to, but I don't think it'll

01:22:19 ◼   ► it'll be soon. Certainly, I mean, watchOS 2, we know what's in it and that's, you know, watch

01:22:25 ◼   ► faces built by third parties are not one of the things that's in it. So I think it's inevitable,

01:22:31 ◼   ► I think there'll be an approval process, but I think it's more likely that we'll see kind of like

01:22:37 ◼   ► new watch faces show up from Apple over time than, you know, with software updates.

01:22:46 ◼   ► it's going to be a long time before we we see more of that in the in the uh like in an app store kind

01:22:51 ◼   ► of model so i agree with you mike i mean we're getting some with watchos too but not nearly enough

01:22:59 ◼   ► there should be a couple more like what they're doing just a couple of photo faces

01:23:02 ◼   ► and you can add a photo face of your own right now the strategy is look if you want to customize

01:23:08 ◼   ► these these faces with um with complications we'll let you do that that's that's where you the the

01:23:15 ◼   ► developers get in. And I think that's, I think it's fine, honestly, I think it's

01:23:21 ◼   ► fine. I would like to see more faces on a more variety of faces from Apple and I

01:23:25 ◼   ► hope that comes, but I can understand them being really cautious with such a

01:23:29 ◼   ► new platform about something as key as the watch face. I get it.

01:23:34 ◼   ► Yeah it doesn't bother me, I mean sure would I like to see some of my favorite

01:23:37 ◼   ► UI designers create great-looking user interfaces for the watch face? Sure. Do I

01:23:44 ◼   ► I need it? No, because in all honesty like the the utility face that I use is

01:23:51 ◼   ► really great looking and I changed the color on it every time I change my watch

01:23:54 ◼   ► band and it makes me happy like that's all I really need I don't need one in

01:23:58 ◼   ► that to be honest. Right so that's about it for this week if you would like to

01:24:04 ◼   ► find our show notes you can go ahead and visit relay.fm/upgrades/49

01:24:10 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online he is @jsnell on Twitter and he writes over at sixcolors.com

01:24:17 ◼   ► and hosts many other great podcasts on the incomparable.com and of course is the host

01:24:22 ◼   ► of Clockwise on Relay FM as well.

01:24:25 ◼   ► I am @imike and I host a whole host of other shows at Relay FM like I am on Connected and

01:24:34 ◼   ► I'm also on Analog, Cortex, Virtual, Quiztiff, probably missing one or two.

01:24:40 ◼   ► I've definitely done that, I've definitely missed some.

01:24:43 ◼   ► But, anyhow, that's how it goes.

01:24:45 ◼   ► On with the pen addict, there you go.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Now, never mind, I'm just going to move on from here.

01:24:49 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsor this week, our sponsors this week, Stamps.com, Hover, and

01:24:55 ◼   ► GoToMeeting.

01:24:56 ◼   ► If you enjoy the show, please go and support them.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And we'll be back next week.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Goodbye Jason Snell.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Oh, look at that.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Least rag!

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