Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM it is time for Upgrade. Today's show is number 37 and it is brought to you by

00:00:15 ◼   ► lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts,

00:00:21 ◼   ► MailRoute, a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam,

00:00:25 ◼   ► and PDF Pen Scan Plus from Smile, which is the app for mobile scanning and O.C.

00:00:33 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always by the man with the plan, it's Mr.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Jason Snell.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - I will reveal my plan to you at a later time.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Hello Myke, how's it going?

00:00:42 ◼   ► - I'm very well, how are you?

00:00:44 ◼   ► - It's good, it's Monday.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I've been traveling so much the last couple of months that I'm really happy to be starting

00:00:50 ◼   ► a...

00:00:51 ◼   ► I know it seems weird to be like, "Yay, it's Monday, I get to do some work."

00:00:54 ◼   ► But it's Monday and I get to have a week where it's like I'm not flying anywhere, I just

00:00:59 ◼   ► can actually work for the whole week.

00:01:02 ◼   ► And that's exciting.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So I'm happy to start it with you, as always.

00:01:06 ◼   ► It is a nice start to the week.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Upgrade.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's time to upgrade the week.

00:01:12 ◼   ► The week is upgraded for the rest of the week.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Pretty good.

00:01:15 ◼   ► So we have some categorized follow-up today.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I know.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Well, the last couple of weeks you've been putting together, as I've been completely

00:01:23 ◼   ► underwater with travel and finishing my photos book for Take Control and a bunch of other

00:01:28 ◼   ► projects that we're going to talk about one of them in a little bit that you've been doing

00:01:32 ◼   ► the show prep more than I was doing it for most of the time before and now you've been

00:01:39 ◼   ► doing it the last few weeks and it's a I'm not going to get used to it because I want

00:01:42 ◼   ► to contribute to the show prep and not make you do it all but boy that is a fine list

00:01:46 ◼   ► of show notes there. I wish I wish the audience could see them but we can't give away our

00:01:50 ◼   ► secrets.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Yeah, because we call people names.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Yeah, also it's a podcast, so they couldn't see it, because we can't do that.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Well, that also means that if people have been upset with the last couple of weeks'

00:02:02 ◼   ► episodes or upset with this one, then you can blame me.

00:02:04 ◼   ► That's what's all my fault.

00:02:06 ◼   ► That's right.

00:02:07 ◼   ► If they've seemed off the last few weeks, it's because Myke has been planning them.

00:02:12 ◼   ► So last week on Ask Upgrade, Adam wrote in to say that he was going to be ditching picture

00:02:18 ◼   ► life and moving to photos but he was unhappy that he would be losing the kind

00:02:26 ◼   ► of memories feature the flashback feature of picture life yeah we had a

00:02:30 ◼   ► bunch of people right in with a bunch of different suggestions and we sort of

00:02:35 ◼   ► shrugged and mentioned a couple of things and exposed our ignorance and

00:02:38 ◼   ► then everybody wrote in to say you were dummies so a bunch of these suggestions

00:02:43 ◼   ► we've got more than once, but I have five different suggestions for Adam. The first

00:02:48 ◼   ► one comes from Tony, and Tony suggested that TimeHop would actually be a good answer, because

00:02:54 ◼   ► we mentioned it's like, "Oh, TimeHop just does social," but actually TimeHop can look

00:02:58 ◼   ► at your iPhones, photos, and videos, as well as other services, and show you things from

00:03:03 ◼   ► previous times. So it can look at what's actually on your device.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So, I hope they're going to do an update to TimeHop, although I'm not completely optimistic

00:03:12 ◼   ► about that because if you're using iCloud photo library, it will show you every photo

00:03:15 ◼   ► you took on that date and there will be dozens for some days. And this is what I discovered

00:03:21 ◼   ► is, it's not really picking a few at random if you have like 30, it just shows you all

00:03:25 ◼   ► 30. And if they aren't downloaded to the device because you're doing saving space by having

00:03:31 ◼   ► to be on the cloud, it just shows you the thumbnail at full size and it looks awful.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Ah, okay. That's more of a problem.

00:03:40 ◼   ► TimeHop needs to do some work here.

00:03:41 ◼   ► If you're not using iCloud Photo Library, then it would probably be better.

00:03:46 ◼   ► But it's not ideal, but it does work.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It just sort of ruined TimeHop for me because I've got all these really bad looking thumbnails

00:03:57 ◼   ► for a day instead of them kind of curating it.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And I'd be happy if they just picked a couple, but the app doesn't do that.

00:04:06 ◼   ► But still, TimeHop is an option.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's a fun app.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I like it.

00:04:10 ◼   ► it does look at your photo library.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Even if it did show you all of them, which I agree isn't ideal, at least if you could

00:04:17 ◼   ► see them properly, then it wouldn't be too bad.

00:04:20 ◼   ► I think the worst part of that, that sounds to me anyway, is the fact that it's showing

00:04:23 ◼   ► you low resolution images, basically.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's not good.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Again, it was written before there was the iCloud photo library, so again, they could

00:04:34 ◼   ► probably do something where they say if they don't have the full-size version, I don't

00:04:37 ◼   ► even want to show it.

00:04:39 ◼   ► would require an update. And I'm not sure, I think Timehop doesn't even work in iPad

00:04:44 ◼   ► mode. I think on an iPad it's still an iPhone resolution thing, so I don't know how committed

00:04:51 ◼   ► they are to their iOS app, but it's worth a try.

00:04:54 ◼   ► - Bart wrote in to say that there is a built-in search in iOS that will show you photos from

00:05:00 ◼   ► a year ago.

00:05:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, apparently if you type in the search box one year ago, it shows you your photos

00:05:05 ◼   ► from a year ago. That doesn't work on photos for the Mac. I don't know why. But Bart says

00:05:12 ◼   ► that you can type one year ago in iOS photos and it will show you pictures from a year

00:05:16 ◼   ► ago.

00:05:17 ◼   ► It's not showing me anything, so maybe I didn't take pictures a year ago.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Maybe. I don't know.

00:05:22 ◼   ► But okay. That's fine.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Thanks Bart.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Chris wrote in to suggest another app called Memoir. Chris says that it connects to a bunch

00:05:33 ◼   ► of different services and it does the job for him for photo memories so that's

00:05:36 ◼   ► one and Graham suggested another app called photo flashback which apparently

00:05:44 ◼   ► does a similar kind of thing photo flashback looks at the looks what

00:05:48 ◼   ► actually is on your device this I remember I said that I thought there was

00:05:52 ◼   ► an app that might have done this and the reason I know this is because Graham

00:05:56 ◼   ► wrote it up for Mac stories so that looks at your iCloud photo library and

00:06:01 ◼   ► it will show you previous years there. And then Richard finally wrote in to say that

00:06:06 ◼   ► Workflow, the app Workflow, has a workflow called Time Machine that lets you look at

00:06:12 ◼   ► photos from a set time ago. So you can go in and say when do you want the photos to

00:06:16 ◼   ► be and it will show you them.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Now that's the way to work around the fact that things like smart albums will only let

00:06:22 ◼   ► you set a specific date by saying, you know, using a workflow because workflow can do that.

00:06:29 ◼   ► looks like it's a good option because it's got your photos and like Timehop

00:06:33 ◼   ► it's gonna connect to your other photo services and float those to the top and

00:06:36 ◼   ► those are all fun. So that was great feedback. Thank you everybody for doing

00:06:40 ◼   ► what we could not. We'll just give Adam some answers.

00:06:43 ◼   ► For what we horrifically failed to achieve. There will be links to all of those apps that we

00:06:48 ◼   ► mentioned in today's show notes which you can find in your podcast app of

00:06:51 ◼   ► choice or over at on the website relay.fm/upgrade/37. So moving on we

00:07:02 ◼   ► spoke about Raiders of the Lost Ark last week and I don't want to I want to do my

00:07:08 ◼   ► best to try and not spoil anything that we spoke about because I'm sure that

00:07:12 ◼   ► there'll be some people that have not yet maybe seen the movie or maybe

00:07:20 ◼   ► holding it or something like that you know I've seen that kind of stuff in the

00:07:23 ◼   ► past people do that but basically the feedback that I have here that I wanted

00:07:29 ◼   ► to give is that I think people should go back and listen to the incomparable

00:07:33 ◼   ► episode about raises the last arc episode we're following out episode

00:07:37 ◼   ► number eight we're following out back to 2010 yep we mentioned yes we mentioned

00:07:42 ◼   ► it on the show and then I as soon as we finished recording put it to top of my

00:07:47 ◼   ► overcast list and listen to it and really really enjoyed it so I recommend

00:07:53 ◼   ► that people go back and listen to that. Jon Gruber was on it with Dan Morin and

00:07:58 ◼   ► yourself. Yeah I look back at it and I can't believe we only talked for an hour

00:08:02 ◼   ► but that was back when I imagined that the incomparable would be an hour long

00:08:06 ◼   ► every episode and it's turned out to be more like an hour and a half now and I

00:08:10 ◼   ► just don't care I don't I don't edit it down I try to wind the conversation down

00:08:14 ◼   ► after an hour or 90 minutes or so, but sometimes it runs long. But yeah, and I was glad you

00:08:20 ◼   ► mentioned, because I haven't listened to that episode in a while, and you mentioned it actually

00:08:22 ◼   ► sounds pretty good. I mean, keeping in mind that's a podcast from five years ago. The

00:08:27 ◼   ► whole idea with Incomparable is that they're all meant to be, more or less, they're all

00:08:31 ◼   ► about works. And if you go back later and watch a movie, you should be able to listen

00:08:35 ◼   ► to the episode about that movie and get something out of it, even if it was five years ago,

00:08:39 ◼   ► Because we're not talking about the headlines of 2010, we're just talking about Raiders

00:08:44 ◼   ► of the Lost Ark.

00:08:46 ◼   ► So it was good to hear that you thought it sounded okay, because that was the eighth

00:08:49 ◼   ► of those that I produced.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And so probably something in the tenth or fifteenth podcast I had ever edited, so I'm

00:08:56 ◼   ► glad it sounded okay.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and it was just fun to hear.

00:09:00 ◼   ► But it was really interesting, because it just didn't sound like it was old.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It sounded really good.

00:09:06 ◼   ► So congratulations on the evergreen content.

00:09:09 ◼   ► That's great.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Next many people...

00:09:15 ◼   ► So as a quick aside, I was talking about...

00:09:20 ◼   ► We were talking a bit about utility belts and things like that.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And I mentioned how in...

00:09:24 ◼   ► In the Emma Jones's whip.

00:09:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:27 ◼   ► I was talking about...

00:09:28 ◼   ► I'd seen Star Wars that weekend as well.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And I mentioned how Luke Skywalker seems to happen upon a grappling hook when he needs

00:09:37 ◼   ► to swing across that like the cavern basically with Leia.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Really designed cavern yes.

00:09:45 ◼   ► So I you know I thought like why did he have a grappling hook and basically everyone that

00:09:50 ◼   ► listened to the show commented to let me know that it probably came from the stormtrooper

00:09:56 ◼   ► suit but then my next question my follow-up question is so why do stormtroopers have grappling

00:10:03 ◼   ► hooks. I don't understand why anybody on the Death Star needed a grappling hook.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So that's kind of all I have there about that. Yeah it's just more

00:10:17 ◼   ► questions. Answer one question, ask another question. But I do like that it's

00:10:20 ◼   ► not something I'd really thought of, that even though they ditch the Stormtrooper

00:10:23 ◼   ► outfit he apparently keeps the the utility belt because you know maybe they

00:10:28 ◼   ► could use it and they do. Yep he's like "this is great I'm gonna I'm gonna keep

00:10:32 ◼   ► this thing's awesome there's a multi-tool on here there's a there's an

00:10:36 ◼   ► electric screwdriver lasers everything lasers everything but yeah so there you

00:10:42 ◼   ► go so maybe maybe stormtroopers have grappling hooks too but it doesn't make

00:10:46 ◼   ► complete sense to me and then Brian also wrote in to say that in the 1977

00:10:51 ◼   ► theatrical release Luke's grappling hook misses the first time he tries again I'm

00:10:55 ◼   ► pleased that they did that and it's sad to see that it was Lucas right out of

00:11:00 ◼   ► there. And then one last piece of follow-up I have today Jason if you

00:11:08 ◼   ► remember about our Filipino boy band that was basically started in our honor

00:11:15 ◼   ► that's not true at all. Gabriel created a artist's rendition of what

00:11:22 ◼   ► the upgrade band could look like I don't know if you've seen this I think it is

00:11:26 ◼   ► amazing and I wanted the world to see it because it is an incredible picture of

00:11:31 ◼   ► me and you. I am I Myke with an I, yeah, I-M-I-C, and for a reason I'm not

00:11:37 ◼   ► completely sure you you go by the name Manila Ice. I guess because of the

00:11:42 ◼   ► Philippines, right? This is the Philippines, yeah. This is the Philippine boy band

00:11:45 ◼   ► version of us. And you are singing a song of original composition called

00:11:50 ◼   ► Myke at the Movies. Yes. And there are some great signs being held by our

00:11:55 ◼   ► our adoring fan base in the audience. Yes, they all have hearts for eyes.

00:11:59 ◼   ► They're very much like the the one student in that opening scene of Raiders

00:12:04 ◼   ► of the Lost Ark in the classroom. So there's a heart upgrade

00:12:10 ◼   ► sign and a "Yo Amo I, Myke" sign. It's great is what we're saying. So thank you, Gabriel.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Yeah, excellent work. So I think we're actually at the end of follow-up. Yeah, I

00:12:24 ◼   ► I think so. So I think what we've done today is that if I prepare follow-up it is efficient.

00:12:29 ◼   ► It is. Yeah I am terrible at, I'm so excited by follow-up even now you'd think I'd be jaded

00:12:35 ◼   ► that I just pack in so much follow-up. Also we have the genius move of putting ask upgrade

00:12:38 ◼   ► at the end so we split our follow-up essentially in two and that's a that's a good move I think

00:12:43 ◼   ► makes it seem like we have more self-control than we actually do. Yeah there's some great

00:12:48 ◼   ► stuff in Ask Upgrade today actually. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that as always. But

00:12:51 ◼   ► So let me take a break, we'll take our first break before we jump into some topics that

00:12:55 ◼   ► we have today.

00:12:56 ◼   ► This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at lynda.com.

00:13:01 ◼   ► They are the online learning platform of over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you

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00:13:08 ◼   ► You can get yourself a free 10-day trial by visiting lynda.com.

00:13:12 ◼   ► That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Lynda.com is for people that basically want to expand their mind to learn new and exciting

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00:14:04 ◼   ► expect right? They have the software right? So you can go and learn how to use

00:14:08 ◼   ► Lightroom, they had courses on aperture. I'm sure that they have courses on the

00:14:11 ◼   ► photos app as well. But you can also learn the practical stuff. So like how to

00:14:16 ◼   ► to shoot a portrait properly, how to light a scene properly. It's like it's

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00:15:29 ◼   ► visit lynda.com/upgrade for your free 10 day trial. Thank you so much lynda.com for the

00:15:37 ◼   ► continued support of this show and Relay FM.

00:15:40 ◼   ► So, Mr. Jason Snell, you put together a little thing that you released this weekend, a project

00:15:51 ◼   ► that you've been working on for The Incomparable.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Do you want to explain to people kind of what it is and where the idea for that came from?

00:15:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so this weekend, yeah, we dropped this episode.

00:16:05 ◼   ► So David Letterman, the TV talk show host in the US for...

00:16:11 ◼   ► He's been hosting a nightly talk show for 33 years.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I guess you call them chat shows, would you?

00:16:17 ◼   ► Yeah, we would call them.

00:16:18 ◼   ► English people?

00:16:19 ◼   ► Yeah, chat shows.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Yeah, chat shows.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, they talk, chat, whatever.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Anyway, he's retiring after 33 years.

00:16:24 ◼   ► His last show was Wednesday.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And in the 80s, it was...

00:16:30 ◼   ► The best way I could describe it, I think, is that during my formative years, as a teenager,

00:16:38 ◼   ► kind of understanding and being exposed to different kinds of writing and culture and

00:16:47 ◼   ► comedy and creativity and things like that and irony.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I just absorbed a lot from David Letterman.

00:16:53 ◼   ► I can't remember when I started watching him, but I was very rapidly watching his show,

00:16:57 ◼   ► recording his show on a VCR and playing it back the next morning every day, every night,

00:17:02 ◼   ► every day.

00:17:05 ◼   ► So it was a huge fan and it made a huge impact on me.

00:17:10 ◼   ► With him retiring, I thought I want to do an episode of The Incomparable about that.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I was thinking about getting together a panel.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I know a bunch of people who are also David Letterman fans and I was going to get them

00:17:21 ◼   ► all together and we were going to talk about it. And I had a moment where I thought, you

00:17:24 ◼   ► know, I kind of want to do something special and I'm not quite sure whether I had been

00:17:30 ◼   ► thinking do I want to try something in a little bit of a different format and I can't remember

00:17:34 ◼   ► whether I actually said, you know, hey I want to live through what Myke lived through when

00:17:40 ◼   ► he made Behind the App. I don't know if I did that or not but I thought it would be

00:17:44 ◼   ► interesting. I have a love of formats. I have a love of making things to a format for hundreds

00:17:50 ◼   ► of episodes like with Incomparable and as we're now doing with this show. But I also

00:17:56 ◼   ► love breaking formats. I think one of the great things about having a recurring format

00:17:59 ◼   ► is that when you break it, it's funny and interesting to do something unexpected. Honestly,

00:18:08 ◼   ► thinking about it right now, probably something influenced a lot by David Letterman in the

00:18:13 ◼   ► 80s because he took what was by all accounts a normal talk show and then did extremely

00:18:17 ◼   ► weird stuff with it. That was a kick. I decided to do that. I decided what if I did an episode

00:18:25 ◼   ► of The Incomparable that was more edited and produced like an NPR show or like Behind the

00:18:30 ◼   ► App where I did interviews with a bunch of different people and then sort of told a story.

00:18:34 ◼   ► A big motivator for me too was that I had a real point of view for this story. Sometimes

00:18:39 ◼   ► we talk about movies and I have an opinion but I think that the most important thing

00:18:42 ◼   ► about it is the conversation. Everybody's got their different takes and there's a give

00:18:46 ◼   ► and taken all of that. With this, I felt like there was some stuff I really wanted to say

00:18:51 ◼   ► about David Letterman and about the arc of his career and about how it influenced me

00:18:57 ◼   ► and what it all means to me that he's retiring. I felt like a panel discussion wasn't really

00:19:03 ◼   ► the place for that. I wanted to exert a little more editorial authority over that topic.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I decided to do that, to do the interviews and then write a script that I would narrate

00:19:19 ◼   ► and interleave, drop in all of these little bits from my interview subjects.

00:19:26 ◼   ► So I did.

00:19:28 ◼   ► It's about an hour and six minutes long and it dropped on Friday night.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It was a lot of work, but you know that because you did the same thing with Behind the App.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I want to talk about the Incomparable episode a little bit. I know Letterman,

00:19:44 ◼   ► like I am familiar with him. I've seen clips and stuff over the years but I've

00:19:50 ◼   ► never seen an episode of either or any of his shows. I'm kind of

00:19:58 ◼   ► tangentially familiar with him and I've seen some YouTube clips you know of like

00:20:01 ◼   ► oh you should watch this type of thing. So I listened to the show and found it

00:20:06 ◼   ► really interesting to kind of hear the history of this guy and basically I was

00:20:11 ◼   ► like listen I listened to it today and was like pausing and going to YouTube to

00:20:16 ◼   ► find things like what was the monkey cam I watched like his 9/11 monologue and

00:20:23 ◼   ► right kind of stuff like things I thought about putting in more audio

00:20:26 ◼   ► clips and quite frankly I ran out of time I just an energy I just couldn't I

00:20:30 ◼   ► thought about putting in a lot of more audio and instead I've got it a couple

00:20:35 ◼   ► at the section breaks but otherwise I just I just didn't do it it is all on

00:20:39 ◼   ► YouTube basically all of it I was gonna say like I wish that you did it and then

00:20:43 ◼   ► when I watched it was like you couldn't have put seven minutes in the middle it

00:20:47 ◼   ► would have been weird like like that that monologue was I think quite

00:20:52 ◼   ► important to watch to understand a bit about him so I kind of was just like

00:20:55 ◼   ► searching around YouTube today and getting a bit familiar with it and I can

00:21:00 ◼   ► see that like in your intention of creating this episode it was to celebrate

00:21:05 ◼   ► the work that that man did and share it with like-minded people but for me you

00:21:11 ◼   ► actually educated me about why letterman is an important thing to a bunch of

00:21:17 ◼   ► people and I found it quite fascinating so it was excellent work.

00:21:21 ◼   ► I'm glad you liked it one of the things I mean I I go back and forth between

00:21:27 ◼   ► thinking it's it's targeted at nobody because it's about a subject that only

00:21:33 ◼   ► only people who really care about it will want to listen to, and yet it spends a lot

00:21:36 ◼   ► of time explaining who the person is. That's in my more negative moments. In my more positive

00:21:41 ◼   ► moments, what I would say is, I tried to make something that would explain why he was important

00:21:45 ◼   ► to me, even if he's not important to you, and why he was important to other people,

00:21:51 ◼   ► the other people I talked to, and tell sort of an interesting story also about somebody

00:21:56 ◼   ► who's influential at an early part in your life and an early part in their career, and

00:22:03 ◼   ► also how the wheel continues to turn and the person who starts out as this influential

00:22:07 ◼   ► rule breaker ends up as the man at the end, and how that's the path that we all kind of

00:22:11 ◼   ► follow is Phil Michaels in the piece says something about Conan O'Brien and says, "People

00:22:17 ◼   ► younger than me feel the same way about him, but I don't because people younger than me

00:22:22 ◼   ► are awful," I think is what he says.

00:22:26 ◼   ► That was part of it too.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I've been interested to hear from a few people who don't like him or don't know anything

00:22:32 ◼   ► about him that they got something out of the piece.

00:22:35 ◼   ► That was part of the goal, was to tell a story that was partly about me and my influences

00:22:39 ◼   ► and why I find this important.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Putting it in my voice a little bit more, I felt, was one of the reasons to do that.

00:22:45 ◼   ► If it was just a, "Hey, let's all talk about David Letterman," I'm not sure if people who

00:22:50 ◼   ► didn't really like David Letterman would want to listen, but telling a story about why he

00:22:54 ◼   ► was important and why a lot of people are really, consider this week to be a big deal.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Why is that? Why do we think that this is a milestone that he's retiring? And so that

00:23:05 ◼   ► I tried to put that in there.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I wouldn't spoil it because people should listen to it but I really liked the personal

00:23:11 ◼   ► stories that you threw in both your own opinions about him now but then also the story that

00:23:15 ◼   ► you put in to explain how you feel. That was really really nice.

00:23:19 ◼   ► That's my This American Life moment in there. There's a couple of those where I was I had

00:23:24 ◼   ► the moment of like, "Oh, this is sort of like that," and it was this complete tangent about

00:23:27 ◼   ► my own life, and I thought, "You know, actually these kinds of things do kind of thrive when

00:23:33 ◼   ► people bring in some of their personal baggage."

00:23:35 ◼   ► This is supposed to be kind of my personal story along with some other friends of mine's

00:23:40 ◼   ► personal stories about this, so I threw it in there, and I'm pretty happy with it.

00:23:44 ◼   ► There are a million things I would change if I wanted to spend another week on it, but

00:23:48 ◼   ► I don't, and I don't have the time, and he's retiring Wednesday.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So that we got we got it where you know I got it to someplace that I was I was I was

00:23:58 ◼   ► pretty happy with it.

00:23:59 ◼   ► But yeah I did try to make I also wrote the script.

00:24:03 ◼   ► So that's you know it's me reading words that I wrote but it's me reading reading from a

00:24:07 ◼   ► script and that that's an interesting challenge too because that's not the same as just speaking

00:24:11 ◼   ► extemporaneously like this.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And so that was that was also kind of interesting.

00:24:16 ◼   ► So it was fun to do.

00:24:18 ◼   ► I consulted you about how you put together Behind the App and then essentially ignored

00:24:24 ◼   ► your advice.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Because I had, you did a lot of Behind the App, I feel, where you sort of knew your interviews

00:24:32 ◼   ► and knew where people said, knew that people said things that you were going to put in.

00:24:36 ◼   ► So you'd write, right?

00:24:38 ◼   ► And then you'd go find clips to illustrate what you were writing about.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Is that accurate?

00:24:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:24:44 ◼   ► I mean, I did all the interviews.

00:24:45 ◼   ► all the questions, did all the interviews, then wrote the scripts. And most of the

00:24:53 ◼   ► time I wrote the scripts and then went back into the interviews, re-listened the

00:24:59 ◼   ► relevant sections and cut out the clips that I thought I would want to use. Then

00:25:03 ◼   ► I recorded the audio of me reading the script, then I would stop at points that I

00:25:09 ◼   ► wanted to add clips, listen back to the correctly categorized clips and drop

00:25:13 ◼   ► them in where I thought that they were relevant.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Yeah, which makes sense.

00:25:20 ◼   ► So what I tried to do instead was I had Casting Words, which is a podcast transcript service,

00:25:28 ◼   ► and I could have used some other services, but I just chose them because I've used them

00:25:31 ◼   ► before.

00:25:32 ◼   ► I had them do transcripts of all my interviews.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And I posted, I should say, I posted the interviews, and Joe Steele in the chat room points this

00:25:38 ◼   ► out.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I know he liked doing this, and I've heard from a couple other people that the show is

00:25:42 ◼   ► an hour long and it features me and then it features clips from these interviews I did,

00:25:46 ◼   ► these five interviews that I did. Or the bonus track, you can actually listen for three and

00:25:51 ◼   ► a half hours to all five interviews I did. It's just the interviews. So you can hear

00:25:56 ◼   ► what I took out and what I kept because three and a half hours of interviews only leads

00:26:02 ◼   ► to an hour of running time and that includes the ads and me who's not in the interviews.

00:26:07 ◼   ► So it's a very different kind of thing. But anyway, so I transcribed those three and a

00:26:11 ◼   ► and a half hours of interviews with time code. That's an option. You pay a little more per

00:26:15 ◼   ► minute. And then I treated it kind of like a magazine article in that, you know, a lot

00:26:22 ◼   ► of times if I'm writing an article with many, a news story or a magazine story that's got

00:26:26 ◼   ► lots of quotes in it, which I don't do much anymore, but I used to do all the time, you

00:26:31 ◼   ► end up with all your notes of all your interviews and you put them together and you find the

00:26:35 ◼   ► common areas of conversation and you kind of organize those quotes and then you build

00:26:39 ◼   ► the story around it. And that's what I did with this script. I used the... I knew that

00:26:44 ◼   ► we had talked about when did you first see Letterman, why were those early days so influential,

00:26:51 ◼   ► what about when he didn't get The Tonight Show, Jay Leno got The Tonight Show and then

00:26:55 ◼   ► he moved to CBS and how did that feel. And then sort of like what's your relationship

00:26:58 ◼   ► with the show now that it's been on for 20 years, do you still watch it every night?

00:27:03 ◼   ► We had some buckets for those things. So I took what everybody said about those different

00:27:08 ◼   ► topics from the transcripts and basically copied and pasted them together into different

00:27:13 ◼   ► categories and those are basically the scenes of the show and then I wrote my narration

00:27:18 ◼   ► around those transcripts and some of the transcripts were wrong so as I was editing the show and

00:27:23 ◼   ► then I just go to the timecode and and cut out those bits and I color-coded them all

00:27:28 ◼   ► and then I basically took the script and dropped them in recorded my narration and then dropped

00:27:33 ◼   ► the clips in one by one. And at one point I found that they had transcribed me saying

00:27:38 ◼   ► things as if it was one of the subjects. I was like, "Boy, I really agree with what

00:27:40 ◼   ► this guy said here." It was me. So I had to rewrite and re-record a couple of things.

00:27:46 ◼   ► But that was my approach to it, which I don't know if I would do that again, but it certainly

00:27:50 ◼   ► made it a lot easier because I knew exactly what people said, you know, with a couple

00:27:55 ◼   ► exceptions and could just kind of craft it. And as somebody who's written those kind

00:28:00 ◼   ► of stories before, that was a format that was comfortable for me. The idea that I had

00:28:03 ◼   ► all the text in front of me and I was just essentially choosing quotes like I

00:28:07 ◼   ► was writing a story except it was a radio story instead.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I really think that if I was going to do what you did now I would probably do it the way that you did it.

00:28:22 ◼   ► Like if I was gonna do one episode that that method is a very smart way of

00:28:29 ◼   ► doing just being able to find things because it was incredibly time intensive

00:28:34 ◼   ► for me having to go back and listen again to the probably I think maybe 25 to

00:28:41 ◼   ► 30 hours of interviews. Oh my god yeah the I was able to do like searches in

00:28:46 ◼   ► the transcripts and also discovering the casting words had a timecode option that

00:28:52 ◼   ► was a huge one for me because then I would find an interesting thing and move

00:28:56 ◼   ► it into the script with the time code. And that made it, when I put the show, it didn't

00:29:01 ◼   ► take me, it took me most of Friday to put the show together, but it didn't take that

00:29:04 ◼   ► much time because I knew at 30 minutes into Aaron Barnhart, he said this. I could just

00:29:10 ◼   ► go there and clip it out and say, "That's what I need." So it was effective. I'm sure

00:29:17 ◼   ► there are other ways of doing it, but since I don't have a production staff or anything

00:29:21 ◼   ► like that. I used casting words as my production staff essentially to get me a transcript.

00:29:27 ◼   ► It's funny, we take so much pride, I think you and I both, in the production of these things.

00:29:33 ◼   ► When I'm doing an incomparable episode, I do a lot of editing for that, but it's all about

00:29:40 ◼   ► simple editorial choices. You're tidying things up, basically.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. And I'll remove tangents and all of that. So it's part of the creative process

00:29:50 ◼   ► to edit it. And so I take great pride in that. This was different. The writing of the script was

00:29:55 ◼   ► the creative process. And I realized later that with a couple exceptions, which I would have

00:30:00 ◼   ► caught on a first listen, I could have handed the script to a production assistant and said, "Cut

00:30:07 ◼   ► this," and gotten what I wanted, because the script was what I wanted. And that's very different.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And I don't have a production assistant. I did it myself. But I had that moment as I was building

00:30:17 ◼   ► the show on Friday that I had already done the creative part, which is not the case with

00:30:26 ◼   ► most of the other podcasts I do where there's the creative part of the steering the conversation

00:30:29 ◼   ► and then there's the cleanup and that you make some decisions there. All my editorial

00:30:33 ◼   ► decisions with a couple of exceptions happened in the script. And that was just a funny moment

00:30:38 ◼   ► to realize that as a control freak who's used to controlling everything in the edit, I realized

00:30:43 ◼   ► my script was what I intended and I could literally have just handed the

00:30:48 ◼   ► script in the files to somebody who's a competent audio editor and said do this

00:30:53 ◼   ► and it would have been fine. So I had people like that I would send my scripts

00:30:58 ◼   ► to to have them kind of looked at and chopped down or added to and that was an

00:31:04 ◼   ► incredible help for me at least initially as it got towards the end I

00:31:08 ◼   ► started to run out of time so I was the last couple of episodes the scripts were

00:31:12 ◼   ► just 100% done by me but by that point I felt like I had a better guide for how

00:31:17 ◼   ► to do it but I mean you know behind the app ran for 11 episodes and you know I'm

00:31:25 ◼   ► doing the music thing now which is way easier to put together it doesn't take

00:31:30 ◼   ► as much time to put together the edit is still a couple of hours but I mean

00:31:35 ◼   ► editing an episode of behind the app like it you know they're about they're

00:31:39 ◼   ► about 40 minutes on average. I mean just the assembly would take five or

00:31:44 ◼   ► six hours. And I am really proud of it. But one of my feelings for

00:31:51 ◼   ► this, and I wonder how you feel about it, what are the benefits of one

00:31:57 ◼   ► style over the other? I mean a lot of it is about taste and is there a

00:32:02 ◼   ► business benefit to one style or the other is something that I find very

00:32:06 ◼   ► interesting and I wonder how you feel having done just this one if you even

00:32:10 ◼   ► have a sense of that?

00:32:13 ◼   ► Oh I don't know I don't know if I do I will I will say that I had I had a bunch

00:32:24 ◼   ► of people say more like this.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Yeah sure.

00:32:29 ◼   ► No no more like that.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Like with the radio drama yeah as a one-off every now and then it was

00:32:36 ◼   ► it's a lot of work to do something like this. And I know you felt this way, I

00:32:40 ◼   ► mean I know how hard you worked on behind the app, so I don't know. I don't know.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Well I feel like behind the app was really good and on the whole the

00:32:52 ◼   ► feedback of it was was really good too and I'm very proud of it. But I mean I

00:32:56 ◼   ► was talking about this on analog last this week. Kind of behind the app met all

00:33:04 ◼   ► the goals that I set for it but I didn't anticipate the amount of work that was

00:33:10 ◼   ► gonna be needed to do it. I didn't know it was gonna take the amount of work

00:33:14 ◼   ► that it did. And it's interesting because you know I know it's like what is what

00:33:21 ◼   ► is the better thing to do here because it's all about taste and and I wonder

00:33:25 ◼   ► from a you know if you were trying to run an effective business like we are

00:33:29 ◼   ► here. For me it was like where is my time best served?

00:33:33 ◼   ► Because could I do a panel show which was as financially and successful and

00:33:39 ◼   ► popular as Behind the App was? Yes, I do three of them basically. And this show

00:33:48 ◼   ► and Connected for example, they take like a tenth of the amount of time to create.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And it's interesting because it's like I would love to do more things like

00:34:01 ◼   ► Behind the App and I will again in the future but there has to be an incredibly

00:34:06 ◼   ► good reason to do it because when I initially did Behind the App I was like

00:34:11 ◼   ► this is just what it's gonna be now I'm just gonna do these over and over and

00:34:14 ◼   ► over again. I realize it's podcasting about

00:34:19 ◼   ► podcasting now but also I think we're talking about making creative choices

00:34:22 ◼   ► choices, which I think is interesting. I did the Letterman episode the way I did because

00:34:26 ◼   ► I wanted to try that on for size, and I felt like it was an appropriate... I was trying

00:34:33 ◼   ► it on and it fit what I wanted to do. So it was a good opportunity to try that because

00:34:39 ◼   ► it was a good match topic-wise, and my intent was it was a match for it. But yeah, I mean,

00:34:46 ◼   ► I went on a mini Twitter rant that I won't recap here, but the idea that one format is

00:34:52 ◼   ► superior to another. I mean, just because it takes more work doesn't mean it's fundamentally

00:34:55 ◼   ► better. It's just different. And if I had done a Letterman episode that was a roundtable

00:35:00 ◼   ► in a classic style, it would have been interesting. It would have been different. There would

00:35:04 ◼   ► have been some things that came up that would have been interesting areas to go in that

00:35:08 ◼   ► didn't come up because the participants didn't speak to each other. They all spoke to me.

00:35:13 ◼   ► It would have been different. It would have been good. It would have not been the same.

00:35:16 ◼   ► And I feel like this is the challenge is I think that in the end to the listener, a lot

00:35:21 ◼   ► of times, I know you can tell that something's had a lot of work put into it, but I think

00:35:29 ◼   ► maybe there's not an understanding of just how much more effort it is. And the scale

00:35:35 ◼   ► is different. Like an NPR podcast, I mean, the amount of effort that goes into every

00:35:39 ◼   ► one of those shows and the staff that they've got, I think people, it's great that people

00:35:44 ◼   ► listen to shows like this, but they have to understand that, you know, comparing a show

00:35:48 ◼   ► like this to a show like This American Life, I mean, you and I could do this with Skype

00:35:55 ◼   ► and essentially with free software and post it for almost nothing. And we have a little

00:36:00 ◼   ► more than that, but it's essentially like that. And something like This American Life

00:36:04 ◼   ► or any of the more highly produced NPR stuff, I mean, there are whole staffs of writers

00:36:11 ◼   ► and technical people and reporters. It's just a huge operation. It's a totally different

00:36:16 ◼   ► scale. And the great thing about this medium is that this medium can hold all these different

00:36:23 ◼   ► kinds of approaches. But they are really different. And sometimes I think the professionalism

00:36:31 ◼   ► that we can bring to a show like this maybe hides the fact that we're doing this on essentially

00:36:40 ◼   ► a shoestring budget compared to something like that. And that's just how it is. There

00:36:48 ◼   ► are different kinds of things. I was saying to John Syracuse actually the other day that

00:36:54 ◼   ► I could do the incomparable like that every week if it was my entire job. But it would

00:36:59 ◼   ► take all of my time. Literally I could not do a single other thing. And if I could do

00:37:04 ◼   ► that and it could support my family, then maybe I would choose to do that. I probably

00:37:09 ◼   ► because I like writing and stuff, but you know that's the amount of work it is.

00:37:13 ◼   ► It's like a full-time job kind of work to do an episode and how you manage to do

00:37:16 ◼   ► Behind the App for all those weeks with everything else, it blows my mind.

00:37:22 ◼   ► It hurt.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Your mind is blown now. Your mind is also blown.

00:37:30 ◼   ► It was really tough. It was really, really tough.

00:37:34 ◼   ► But you're proud of the work and I'm proud of this episode

00:37:38 ◼   ► and there's something to be said for that.

00:37:40 ◼   ► And I think that's the argument is,

00:37:42 ◼   ► are you challenging yourself creatively?

00:37:44 ◼   ► And are you thinking, what's the best format for this?

00:37:47 ◼   ► And I think if something came up and you said,

00:37:49 ◼   ► you know, that would be a really great idea

00:37:51 ◼   ► for a three-part documentary series,

00:37:53 ◼   ► that you would do it.

00:37:55 ◼   ► Because you've got another tool now,

00:37:57 ◼   ► but you also know what all the ramifications

00:38:00 ◼   ► of that creative decision will be,

00:38:01 ◼   ► and so you can decide, do I want to do that or not?

00:38:06 ◼   ► And I think that's one of the great things

00:38:07 ◼   ► about trying something new is you get a better sense

00:38:10 ◼   ► of how it works for you, what the issues are,

00:38:12 ◼   ► and then you can make a decision

00:38:13 ◼   ► about whether it works for you or not.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I hope that this medium gets to the point

00:38:19 ◼   ► where our businesses, essentially,

00:38:23 ◼   ► are able to do shows like that

00:38:26 ◼   ► and have them be sustainable.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But I don't think we're of the size

00:38:31 ◼   ► where we can do that now,

00:38:32 ◼   ► because you were killing yourself over Behind the App.

00:38:35 ◼   ► I mean, you could do Behind the App

00:38:36 ◼   ► you had some production staff, but you know, you just quit your job to go full time. The

00:38:42 ◼   ► idea that you would hire production staff to help, that's kind of a ways out, I think,

00:38:47 ◼   ► right now. And so it's important to keep that in mind too, that there's ambition that sometimes

00:38:52 ◼   ► exceeds what's possible, at least in the short term. But I would love to get there, because

00:38:57 ◼   ► I do think that there's a lot of fun stuff you can do with audio that we don't do very

00:39:03 ◼   ► much now because it's just so much so much work to do it that it's not

00:39:08 ◼   ► practical. Indeed. I think that's probably enough inside baseball for today. I agree. Let's take a quick

00:39:15 ◼   ► break and then let's talk about some other stuff that people might

00:39:18 ◼   ► like to hear about like Apple Watch apps for example. This week's episode of

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00:40:37 ◼   ► You just like beep beep beep, you're just pointing at things

00:40:39 ◼   ► and it's just off it goes up into the cloud.

00:40:42 ◼   ► You can you can upload them to iCloud or Dropbox.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And you combine this with your on device OCR as well.

00:40:49 ◼   ► You've got all of the scanning and power that you need on a device

00:40:52 ◼   ► that's right in your pocket.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And with the OCR, the character recognition stuff,

00:40:56 ◼   ► it will name files by date automatically,

00:40:59 ◼   ► and you can also grab the text of a scan

00:41:01 ◼   ► and you can paste it into an app.

00:41:02 ◼   ► You know, maybe you wanna throw some sort of contract in

00:41:05 ◼   ► and you wanna do something with it,

00:41:07 ◼   ► or maybe you're scanning in a menu

00:41:09 ◼   ► and you wanna send the results to someone,

00:41:11 ◼   ► you can do all this stuff, it's incredible stuff.

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00:41:17 ◼   ► that I have in my tool belt that Smile provide

00:41:20 ◼   ► to help make me and make, like basically make it easier

00:41:24 ◼   ► for me to do work when I'm on the go.

00:41:25 ◼   ► And it just makes things easier on a daily basis.

00:41:29 ◼   ► PDF/Pen/Scan+ is now available

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00:41:53 ◼   ► for $21.99. So go learn more right now at Smilesoftware.com/upgrade. The best scanner

00:42:01 ◼   ► is the one that's with you. So go grab PDF Pen Scan Plus from the App Store today. Thank

00:42:05 ◼   ► you so much to Smile for their support of this show.

00:42:10 ◼   ► It's not funny that we've come to the point where your phone is your scanner.

00:42:15 ◼   ► It's kind of crazy.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Chris, just scan everything anywhere.

00:42:19 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

00:42:20 ◼   ► It's madness that you just point.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Like why even press a button when you can just point?

00:42:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:42:27 ◼   ► It's unexpected.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Talk about unexpected ramifications of having a camera on the back of your phone.

00:42:33 ◼   ► The fact that you don't even need a scanner and you can scan any document.

00:42:38 ◼   ► I suppose spies thought of that.

00:42:40 ◼   ► It's a very spy thing.

00:42:42 ◼   ► But for regular people to be like, "Yeah, I just do this and all my documents are there."

00:42:45 ◼   ► just it's crazy. So a couple weeks ago, yeah thank you Smile, thank you very much.

00:42:51 ◼   ► A couple weeks ago we had an Ask Upgrade question that I wanted to kind of spin

00:42:57 ◼   ► out into a little bit of a topic today which is about Apple Watch apps.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Daniel wrote in to ask of the watch apps that you installed initially how many of

00:43:06 ◼   ► you kept on your watch? And I think to go to go with this a little bit further

00:43:11 ◼   ► because I mean I know I still have some apps on here that I've never even opened

00:43:14 ◼   ► because I know I might use them in the future.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I kind of wanted to start, Jason, by asking you

00:43:19 ◼   ► and then I'll do the same.

00:43:21 ◼   ► What apps are you actually using on your phone,

00:43:24 ◼   ► sorry, on your watch and why are you using them?

00:43:28 ◼   ► - I would say very few.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I can't say what is installed

00:43:34 ◼   ► 'cause I've got stuff installed that I don't use

00:43:36 ◼   ► that is just there and I don't know why it's there

00:43:38 ◼   ► and I'll get rid of it at some point.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And what I'd say is mostly what I'm using is coming from the glances.

00:43:50 ◼   ► So it's Overcast and the Major League Baseball app and the Fitness app.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And that's about it.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I will sometimes open the Fitness app to start a run or a walk.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know, Passbook when I've got a barcode or something like that.

00:44:16 ◼   ► But I try not to use the apps.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I'm really, and somebody, I think Mark Arment maybe said the other day that he became much

00:44:26 ◼   ► more happy with his Apple Watch when he stopped, if it was Marco, if it's not, I apologize

00:44:31 ◼   ► to him.

00:44:32 ◼   ► But somebody said, "When once you stop actively using apps and just kind of go back on notifications

00:44:39 ◼   ► and glances, it becomes a much more pleasant product.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And I agree with that.

00:44:42 ◼   ► You know, not only the app's kind of not very well featured, but I find even the act of

00:44:48 ◼   ► flipping over into the app view and scrolling around and looking for an app and launching

00:44:52 ◼   ► it to be not a great experience and usually kind of fruitless because of the limitations

00:44:56 ◼   ► of the apps.

00:44:57 ◼   ► So what I end up doing is going into an app because I tap on something in a notification

00:45:02 ◼   ► or a glance or a complication that kicks off an app.

00:45:07 ◼   ► then I'll use the app. But routinely I don't use apps. I'm using

00:45:13 ◼   ► Glances and looking at notifications. But even with Glances you have a very

00:45:20 ◼   ► small amount installed there, don't you? I do. I think that you can overdo it. Well,

00:45:27 ◼   ► the way you navigate Glances is with a swipe, right? So you can have a huge

00:45:31 ◼   ► number of Glances and it's awful because then you can't find the one you're

00:45:34 ◼   ► looking for because there's a huge list so I like I like keeping it keeping it

00:45:38 ◼   ► small and what do I use the what do I use the watch for I mean honestly other

00:45:43 ◼   ► than the remote control I could probably lose most of the rest of these glances

00:45:48 ◼   ► too because they're not that important it's you know am I really going to

00:45:52 ◼   ► reorder my podcast playlist from overcast and maybe but mostly I'm just

00:45:59 ◼   ► gonna use the remote control of the now playing glance to control my phone and not worry about

00:46:06 ◼   ► the overcast details of it. Likewise the Major League Baseball glance tells me the score

00:46:12 ◼   ► and I can tap and open the app and tell me a little bit more but I don't really need

00:46:15 ◼   ► more so I'm just trying to keep it I'm trying to approach this from like how how minimalistic

00:46:22 ◼   ► can I keep this how how I don't want to be a super active watch user that's got I've

00:46:27 ◼   ► got a lot of go-to apps. That's sort of how I'm approaching it is if I want to

00:46:31 ◼   ► do something I will try to do it but I'm trying not to treat it like a phone.

00:46:39 ◼   ► That makes sense. That definitely makes sense. I have way more installed than you because

00:46:45 ◼   ► I've kind of only done maybe one or two clean outs of this stuff. So I have a

00:46:50 ◼   ► bunch of apps on here that I've not even opened but there are some that I'll keep

00:46:54 ◼   ► on there. For example, I have the apps of all of the airlines, like I have a bunch of

00:47:00 ◼   ► airline apps installed, right? And I figure I'm going to keep them on the device because

00:47:05 ◼   ► at some point they're going to be useful, like when I next take a trip with that airline.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And I figure that it might be good to have those apps on here to get like boarding passes

00:47:14 ◼   ► and that kind of thing. Like I have Passbook but sometimes, you know, I want to try them

00:47:19 ◼   ► out but you can't really try those out until I actually have tickets in them.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Right, so you're, you know, eventually you will use them so you've got them around.

00:47:28 ◼   ► Yeah, so they're just there because I figured that they will be useful. But the apps that

00:47:34 ◼   ► I guess I use the most, I use Overcast. Like these are third-party ones, like I use the

00:47:41 ◼   ► Maps app more than I thought I would but obviously it's first-party. I use OmniFocus to see kind

00:47:47 ◼   ► of what's going on. I check things off as well.

00:47:49 ◼   ► Podometer++ I have installed because I just like that app a lot.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I use Dark Sky because I think that the weather stuff that it uses is better, in my opinion, than the standard weather app.

00:48:02 ◼   ► I use DUE. Are you familiar with DUE?

00:48:06 ◼   ► No.

00:48:07 ◼   ► It's like an advanced alarm and reminder app.

00:48:12 ◼   ► app. Like it does some good stuff that I like. Like it will set off an alarm and

00:48:16 ◼   ► it will just keep triggering until you get rid of it and it's got some really

00:48:19 ◼   ► good options for like snoozing things and I use it for like quick alarms like

00:48:24 ◼   ► to take medication or like if I you know want to remember to go out for a walk or

00:48:28 ◼   ► stuff like that like it will continue to bug you and I quite like it. It does timers and

00:48:33 ◼   ► alerts and I like it quite a lot and it works really well on the watch because

00:48:37 ◼   ► you just say like "remind me to take medication at 4 p.m." and it just passes

00:48:42 ◼   ► the text and puts the alert in. It's one of the better watch apps that I've used

00:48:47 ◼   ► actually because it boils down the functionality of the iPhone app and puts

00:48:51 ◼   ► it in there like you can snooze things and it's a really good app and I

00:48:56 ◼   ► like it a lot. They're kind of I think the main apps that I have but I have a ton of

00:49:00 ◼   ► of others on here. But in regard to glances, again I think I maybe have more,

00:49:07 ◼   ► well I know I have more than you do. I have the battery one, although I'm kind of thinking about

00:49:12 ◼   ► getting rid of that because it's not an issue. I haven't had an issue with battery. I'm actually

00:49:19 ◼   ► going to get rid of it now. So the battery one's gone because basically I just open it and I just

00:49:23 ◼   ► look at what the percentage is. That's all it is. Like I just like, oh that's what it is now.

00:49:28 ◼   ► I have OmniFocus there, I find that to be quite useful as a way to quickly get into OmniFocus as

00:49:33 ◼   ► well on the watch. I have Overcast and then Now Playing. I like the Overcast app as well actually,

00:49:39 ◼   ► I think Arco did a great job with the redesign and I like having the, you know, it just has like the

00:49:45 ◼   ► next artwork and stuff like that. I then have the Now Playing because that is really good.

00:49:50 ◼   ► I have Dark Sky there, which because you know I like the glance is really great.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Then I have activity, heartbeat, and pedometer.

00:50:03 ◼   ► There my glasses. That's it? That is it. There my glasses. That's good. And I just took one out then

00:50:09 ◼   ► because I had the official weather glance but I've just removed that because

00:50:13 ◼   ► there was no point having dark sky and weather. This is the thing, every time I

00:50:16 ◼   ► look at this I end up paring it down a little bit more and a little bit more and

00:50:21 ◼   ► a little bit more. Like I have the Twitterrific app installed because you

00:50:27 ◼   ► know I mentioned previously I think I may have to talk about this on connected

00:50:30 ◼   ► that I want to get DM notifications so I just have those on for Twitterrific on

00:50:36 ◼   ► my phone because I'm a Tweetbot user but I like it because you can see the DM in

00:50:40 ◼   ► full you can reply to it on the watch and that sort of stuff if you want and I

00:50:43 ◼   ► quite like that and I think they've done a good job with their app but that's

00:50:47 ◼   ► kind of the extent for me and I don't know if that is good bad I don't know if

00:50:53 ◼   ► it's what Apple intended? I'm not sure about that.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Well I think it's a good question to say. You're coming from the perspective of starting

00:51:05 ◼   ► with a lot and going down to a little and I'm sort of trying to minimize it as much

00:51:10 ◼   ► as I can and then add them as I go. But I'm not sure Apple knows the answer. I mean like

00:51:19 ◼   ► Like I said, I've found that I kind of like apps as things you kick off from, we said

00:51:24 ◼   ► this the other week, things you kick off from a glance or a notification.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And so I don't have a Twitter-ific glance or something, but if I get a Twitter-ific

00:51:33 ◼   ► notification I can tap on it for more information and to reply.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And that's how I launch that app, is through a notification only and not from going out

00:51:40 ◼   ► and finding the app and saying, "Show me some things on Twitter," because I kind of don't

00:51:45 ◼   ► want to do that.

00:51:48 ◼   ► I've been really happy in general with the apps.

00:51:54 ◼   ► So when there is an app like what we have with Twitterrific, I really like the way the

00:52:01 ◼   ► notification launches into the app.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I find that experience to be quite good.

00:52:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Oh, no, that really works for me.

00:52:11 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons why I don't feel the need to go out and launch apps directly

00:52:17 ◼   ► because the notifications send me there.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And that's a good, it can be a good experience.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Twitterrific does a very good job

00:52:25 ◼   ► where it takes you immediately to the thing

00:52:28 ◼   ► that you were notified about and lets you reply to it

00:52:32 ◼   ► or whatever you wanna do.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I've used some other apps that will notify you

00:52:37 ◼   ► and then you tap to launch those apps

00:52:39 ◼   ► and they, like Slack is like this.

00:52:41 ◼   ► The Slack app will say, hey, Myke just DM'd you in Slack

00:52:45 ◼   ► and then I'll tap to open Slack and it'll say,

00:52:47 ◼   ► "All right, here's Slack.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Would you like DMs or mentions?"

00:52:53 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, I just tapped on a DM,

00:52:55 ◼   ► so why don't you show me that DM and let me reply?"

00:52:57 ◼   ► And it just, it fails at that.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So Slack's watch app, I can confidently say,

00:53:02 ◼   ► does a bad job at that.

00:53:03 ◼   ► They did it wrong.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And Twitterithic did it right. - Yeah, their app

00:53:05 ◼   ► needs more work, like in general.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It should be able to do way more than it does, I think.

00:53:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And not to over-feature it, but just like,

00:53:15 ◼   ► what is the point of having this app if something as basic as it alerts you that you've got

00:53:21 ◼   ► a message but when you tap on it, it just doesn't, it's like it doesn't even know that

00:53:26 ◼   ► it sent you the alert and that's not good.

00:53:28 ◼   ► That's not how it should be working and Twitterific shows how it should work in that example where

00:53:33 ◼   ► I got a DM from somebody, I only have Twitterific set to notify me about DMs and I can actually

00:53:38 ◼   ► reply using my voice from the watch and send a DM back to that person on Twitter.

00:53:44 ◼   ► great. Slack does not do nearly as good a job on that front. Sorry Slack, I love you

00:53:52 ◼   ► but your watch app needs work. I still like I was thinking about this the other

00:53:57 ◼   ► day because like you know at the moment everyone's saying that the watch apps

00:54:01 ◼   ► tend to suck which you know by and large they kind of do and it's not some of it

00:54:06 ◼   ► is is fault of not having devices and some of it is fault in just watch kit

00:54:12 ◼   ► right? Just not being enough. And I'm starting to wonder now, when we get

00:54:19 ◼   ► native apps, is it gonna be like a marketing problem? Like is it gonna...

00:54:28 ◼   ► Like the people that have watches or people that are thinking about watches,

00:54:31 ◼   ► are they gonna just think that apps suck on the device and kind of, you know, the

00:54:37 ◼   ► the horse has like left the barn at that point I think that's the right analogy

00:54:42 ◼   ► like it yeah the horse is bolted like it's it's too far at that point people

00:54:47 ◼   ► expect them to kind of suck I don't think so I don't think so I think it's

00:54:54 ◼   ► an interesting question I don't think they suck I think they're not I think

00:54:57 ◼   ► they're just kind of not they only do a limited amount of things but I wouldn't

00:55:01 ◼   ► say like I said some of them are bad some of them are better I think Apple

00:55:06 ◼   ► has plenty of time to allow the apps to get better and people be like hey the

00:55:10 ◼   ► apps are better now and I think it'll any integrand scheme of things I don't

00:55:15 ◼   ► think it matters. Yeah no I can see that but it is it's an interesting thing and

00:55:22 ◼   ► I'm still not 100% sure why they decided to go down the route that they went down.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Like it probably would have just been great if we could just have actionable

00:55:34 ◼   ► notifications some kind of glance support like rather than the full apps I

00:55:38 ◼   ► don't because the more the more I kind of go for it the best stuff lives in the

00:55:43 ◼   ► glances and notifications yeah yeah yeah and we've talked about that before they

00:55:48 ◼   ► have the idea that maybe there's a different approach to interacting with

00:55:53 ◼   ► the apps like then what they've got now and and maybe they'll learn or maybe the

00:55:57 ◼   ► apps will become so great that the the app screen makes more sense than it

00:56:02 ◼   ► maybe does right now.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But I just, I really like interacting,

00:56:07 ◼   ► my computer beeped.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I really like interacting with the notifications

00:56:15 ◼   ► and glances because I feel like it's just contextual

00:56:17 ◼   ► that and that's what the watch is supposed to be.

00:56:19 ◼   ► It's say, hey, this thing happened.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Oh, tap, maybe nothing, maybe reply and then move on.

00:56:25 ◼   ► That, you know, I very rarely am in a situation

00:56:29 ◼   ► where I'm like, let's launch a watch app.

00:56:32 ◼   ► - Yeah. - This doesn't happen.

00:56:34 ◼   ► - Like, because--

00:56:35 ◼   ► - I don't think that's a failing.

00:56:37 ◼   ► I think that's appropriate to the device,

00:56:39 ◼   ► that that's not what it's for.

00:56:42 ◼   ► - So sometimes I'm running into this,

00:56:45 ◼   ► again, I'm not unique in this, right?

00:56:47 ◼   ► But sometimes I'm running into this situation

00:56:49 ◼   ► where I know that I can do something faster on the watch

00:56:53 ◼   ► if the watch app will load fast enough.

00:56:58 ◼   ► So it's like I feel like I'm taking a gamble every time I try and do something.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Because it's like I know I can do this quicker if the watch app will respond.

00:57:07 ◼   ► Because you know it kind of seems to be times a bit of potluck as to whether it's going to load or not.

00:57:13 ◼   ► You know sometimes you'll open a watch app and it's like there straight away.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Sometimes you open a watch app and like you're waiting for like three screen refreshes.

00:57:24 ◼   ► You know, like the screen goes off, cons by cons, screen goes, you know,

00:57:27 ◼   ► you're waiting for the app to load.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And it's kind of, it's like there's just this thing there,

00:57:33 ◼   ► there's this nugget of like this is so useful,

00:57:37 ◼   ► but then other times it's like, "Ah, you're so annoying right now."

00:57:42 ◼   ► - And my hope is that software will solve some of this,

00:57:44 ◼   ► that the OS updates will make this more efficient,

00:57:47 ◼   ► and maybe, you know, having native code running on the device

00:57:52 ◼   ► will mean that a lot of that stuff will be less problematic than it is now.

00:57:56 ◼   ► That's just a hope.

00:57:57 ◼   ► I mean, it might or might not work, but I agree.

00:58:01 ◼   ► There are those moments where you fall in the ... You think, "Oh, I can do this on the

00:58:04 ◼   ► watch really quickly," and then you tap and nothing happens.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Like I said, that feels like I'm falling back into using the pebble where sometimes an app

00:58:12 ◼   ► just isn't there.

00:58:16 ◼   ► You have to go to your phone anyway because you can't use it.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Apple needs to be better at that because Apple controls the operating system.

00:58:22 ◼   ► needs to you know work on on that so that if that my weather glance doesn't

00:58:28 ◼   ► stop working because the app quit in the background and doesn't know to relaunch

00:58:34 ◼   ► it it should know that I've got a weather complication let's say and know

00:58:39 ◼   ► that that means that data needs to be refreshed every so often and it just

00:58:42 ◼   ► doesn't do that sometimes mm-hmm so that's a bug hopefully one that will be

00:58:48 ◼   ► fixed. Should we move on to the mask upgrade? I think that's a good idea. You know what

00:58:56 ◼   ► time it is. It is time to listen to me tell you about some friends and with a

00:59:02 ◼   ► little bit of a chime in for Myke I'm actually looking I do have an app to

00:59:06 ◼   ► turn my light bulbs on and off from my watch so you know well we're living in

00:59:10 ◼   ► the future now. Mm-hmm. There it is I turned them off. Oh they're back on.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, there you go, technology.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade brought to you as often, not always, but often by MailRoute.

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01:00:49 ◼   ► effective and since there's a risk-free trial, there's no reason not to give it a try. All

01:00:53 ◼   ► listeners to Upgrade Rule receive 10% off for the lifetime of your account by going

01:00:59 ◼   ► to mailroute.net/upgrade right now. And thank you to MailRoute for filtering out all the

01:01:05 ◼   ► spam from my inbox and for being a sponsor of #upgrade. #AskUpgrade.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Thank you, MailRoute.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Thank you, MailRoute.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So, like, every time you start the MailRoute read, I'm like, "What am I going to do this

01:01:18 ◼   ► time?" I'm never 100% sure how I'm going to present mailbagging to the world.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:24 ◼   ► But that was a new one. I was in a cavern.

01:01:28 ◼   ► That's a phrase that has never been spoken before in the history of humanity.

01:01:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna start Ask Upgrade with a question from Nilesh.

01:01:36 ◼   ► Nilesh wants to know, "Do you have any Safari extensions in your Safari browsers?

01:01:41 ◼   ► If so, which ones do you have installed?"

01:01:43 ◼   ► I feel like I'm going to break Nilesh's heart a little bit when I tell him that I don't

01:01:47 ◼   ► use Safari.

01:01:49 ◼   ► I am a Chrome user, and I do have some extensions in Chrome that I use.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I use the 1Password extension, and I use the Evernote Web Clipper for the times where I

01:01:59 ◼   ► I want to clip something to Evernote, which is not very often, but when I do it's there

01:02:03 ◼   ► and I'm happy that it's there.

01:02:04 ◼   ► But for me, 1Password is the ultimate of all browser extensions.

01:02:09 ◼   ► I love it very much.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Jason, I am assuming that you do use Safari.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I just want to say as well, I just, sorry, I asked you a question and then decided to

01:02:18 ◼   ► answer an own question of my own that I didn't ask.

01:02:20 ◼   ► I also use Safari on my iPhone.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:24 ◼   ► No, Chrome, sorry.

01:02:27 ◼   ► I use Chrome on my iPhone.

01:02:28 ◼   ► Oh man.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Chrome on my iPhone and Chrome on the desktop.

01:02:31 ◼   ► I'm Chrome all over the place.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Shame.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Shame.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I'm one of those people.

01:02:36 ◼   ► I use Safari.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I'm not one of those people.

01:02:39 ◼   ► I'm one of those other people.

01:02:42 ◼   ► And I'm looking at my list of extensions right now.

01:02:43 ◼   ► They're not all turned on.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I turn them on and off from time to time.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I have Benjamin Mayo's Fireballed extension, which basically adds a fireballed.org link

01:02:54 ◼   ► to Daring Fireball.

01:02:55 ◼   ► So if a site, firebolt.org takes a local cache of anything that's linked to from Daring Fireball,

01:03:02 ◼   ► so if a site gets fireballed, it basically adds a link after every page on Daring Fireball,

01:03:07 ◼   ► after every link that is to the firebolt cache version.

01:03:12 ◼   ► This is for if Grubber destroy the website.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah, you can look at the cache version instead.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I use that occasionally, so I have it turned on.

01:03:20 ◼   ► I currently don't have turned on because it kind of, it messes with the, with some search

01:03:27 ◼   ► results on Google.

01:03:29 ◼   ► But Lex Friedman wrote a plug-in called, or an extension called Affiliatizer, which basically

01:03:35 ◼   ► takes every Amazon link that it sees on the web and puts an affiliate code next to it.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And you can, you can put your own affiliate code or you can put the affiliate code of

01:03:44 ◼   ► somebody else that you like.

01:03:45 ◼   ► It actually ships with three affiliate codes that rotate, and one of them is Lex, and one

01:03:51 ◼   ► of them is me, and one of them is Jon Gruber.

01:03:56 ◼   ► So anyway, I use that sometimes with my own affiliate codes so that I get affiliate links

01:04:00 ◼   ► on everything I buy on Amazon.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I've got a bunch that are not turned on.

01:04:05 ◼   ► One password is in there.

01:04:06 ◼   ► It's obviously turned on.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Greg Noss wrote a Safari extension called Damned Fireball.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And all it does is when the Yankees are doing well and John Gruber puts the Yankees logo

01:04:19 ◼   ► at the top of Daring Fireball, it replaces that image with a Yankees logo with a circle

01:04:24 ◼   ► and a line through it.

01:04:26 ◼   ► That's all it does.

01:04:27 ◼   ► But I love it.

01:04:29 ◼   ► And I keep it on even though the Yankees are not going anywhere this year.

01:04:33 ◼   ► I have Footnotify, which basically takes HTML footnotes and makes them popovers, which I

01:04:44 ◼   ► like because a lot of sites don't do that.

01:04:46 ◼   ► They've got the footnotes at the bottom, including during Fireball, and it turns them into little

01:04:50 ◼   ► popovers where you click the footnote link and it pops a little, the text of the footnote

01:04:54 ◼   ► right there.

01:04:55 ◼   ► So that's a fun one.

01:04:56 ◼   ► I have ultimate status bar which is which creates a status bar that floats

01:05:03 ◼   ► when you that appears when you float over a link with your your cursor so

01:05:08 ◼   ► that's that's kind of a neat one and obviously instapaper and those are the

01:05:14 ◼   ► big ones I've got some other ones that I'm not sure if they still work or not I

01:05:17 ◼   ► have a thing called fastest tube that I use to download YouTube videos from

01:05:21 ◼   ► YouTube but I only but it also hijacks all the ads on all the sites on the web

01:05:25 ◼   ► So I only turn it on like I used it today because I had to download the total party kill

01:05:29 ◼   ► session video because I used that as a source material for

01:05:34 ◼   ► for the podcast and so I enable it I enable fastest tube I download it and then I

01:05:39 ◼   ► Disable it again because I don't like the fact that it's also in addition to its actual features

01:05:45 ◼   ► It's also rewriting all the ads that I see

01:05:47 ◼   ► That's weird. Anyway, that's it

01:05:51 ◼   ► Well, I'm trying my hardest to get all of these in the show notes.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Alright.

01:05:58 ◼   ► So, I'm frantically typing here and googling and finding things.

01:06:04 ◼   ► So I'm going to ask the next question whilst I complete that task.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Stephen would like to know, "Is there a way to teach voice to text the correct spelling

01:06:13 ◼   ► of a name?

01:06:15 ◼   ► For example, "gen," not "jen," or "ally," and not "alley," something like that.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And I –

01:06:25 ◼   ► You have a link there to a Macworld article, which says in Siri how you can pronounce it.

01:06:34 ◼   ► But I don't think that solves the voice-to-text problem.

01:06:36 ◼   ► No.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I couldn't find something for that, but I figured that maybe this could help.

01:06:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:43 ◼   ► So we'll put that link in the notes too, which is, you know, if Siri says a name wrong, you

01:06:48 ◼   ► can actually say that's not how you say it.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And then Siri will respond, how do you pronounce the name and that person's first name?

01:06:56 ◼   ► And then you say it and Siri will try to give you some choices and you can choose which

01:07:02 ◼   ► one is accurate.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And then that should solve that for how Siri pronounces names.

01:07:08 ◼   ► But that doesn't go the other direction in terms of spelling, alternate spellings.

01:07:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I don't know if you, you know, you use Siri and it will often underline in blue, or you

01:07:17 ◼   ► use voice to text, it will underline in blue for something that it doesn't have a high

01:07:21 ◼   ► confidence that it got right.

01:07:22 ◼   ► It's like spell check when you're typing, except it's for speech to text, and it will,

01:07:28 ◼   ► it's nuance behind the scenes saying, "I might not have a high confidence in this word."

01:07:34 ◼   ► And if you tap on that, you get other options.

01:07:37 ◼   ► It's possible that if you type, if you say "Jen," you could correct it, but it's also

01:07:41 ◼   ► possible that it's just gonna not do it and I'm not quite sure what you do. I don't think

01:07:46 ◼   ► there's like a mode. Is there a mode? There are some modes in there where you can actually

01:07:51 ◼   ► say things and they get like return or new paragraph or exclamation point or whatever

01:07:55 ◼   ► that it will translate properly. I'm not sure if there's a way using the Nuance engine to

01:08:00 ◼   ► force it to do you know capital G lowercase en and have that come out but you could try

01:08:08 ◼   ► it. Sure could. No harm in it. It just may end up with something ridiculous but you can

01:08:16 ◼   ► just delete it. @HarleyKen on Twitter kind of pointed out regarding the watch battery

01:08:24 ◼   ► to keep in mind that batteries age and will decrease and because we charge them every

01:08:28 ◼   ► day it could take battery away over time which is you know I understand that and I think

01:08:33 ◼   ► that's in reference to us saying the battery life is so good which we mentioned again today

01:08:36 ◼   ► But it's good right now and you know even if I lost 10% I would still be fine with it.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Yeah I think this person was also suggesting that we um you know I was saying look I think

01:08:49 ◼   ► they overshot and they could dial it back a little bit and I do think that's true and yes it is true

01:08:53 ◼   ► that over time the battery life is going to decrease but it seems like right now they've

01:08:57 ◼   ► they still overshot and frankly I don't want to feel like um like my watch experience is worse

01:09:06 ◼   ► because in a couple of years it needs to be worse, right? I just I I'm not sure I

01:09:10 ◼   ► can get behind that. So that was my thought there.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Jimmy wrote in, "Do you have phantom entries before the watch arrived in your

01:09:22 ◼   ► activity calendar too?" So this is something, and he included a picture, so I'll

01:09:26 ◼   ► explain this. If you go to the activity app on your iPhone and you go back to

01:09:31 ◼   ► before you got the watch, right? It's actually, you can see that there seemed

01:09:39 ◼   ► to be like test entries or something that were going on before your watch

01:09:42 ◼   ► arrived and it's just kind of interesting to see that my watch was

01:09:45 ◼   ► alive and being tested. Yeah, like two weeks before there was a one day where

01:09:50 ◼   ► there was a little bit of activity. Yeah. It's weird. I had that on the 4th, 5th, and the

01:09:56 ◼   ► 4th and 5th of April and yeah there something was happening with my with my

01:10:01 ◼   ► device before it before it arrived with me. Also what was funny about that is I

01:10:05 ◼   ► was not aware that the activity app was a thing that existed. Oh you didn't know? No I never

01:10:12 ◼   ► realized that it was there. So I said where are you seeing that and he said

01:10:16 ◼   ► well in the activity app and I said activity app? It was installed when the

01:10:22 ◼   ► the watch app. Right. Right, so on the, I think that's right, on the 9th and 10th of

01:10:30 ◼   ► April there was a very small, small activity noted. I had... And then nothing. On the 5th of

01:10:40 ◼   ► April two calories were burned. Yes, two calories. So there you go. They were moving

01:10:47 ◼   ► around on their own before they're even shipped out to us. Kyle has asked is

01:10:54 ◼   ► there any place on the Apple watch either on the watch itself or in the

01:10:57 ◼   ► iPhone app to check for watch OS updates? Yes there are in the app. In the

01:11:01 ◼   ► companion app there is like an about thing and you can check for updates

01:11:05 ◼   ► there. It was the first thing that I did when my watch came I just wanted to double

01:11:08 ◼   ► check and so yeah you can do that it's in it's right at the top I think

01:11:12 ◼   ► somewhere in general I believe. Yep you can go to software update and it will

01:11:17 ◼   ► check for an update. And there isn't one. There isn't one. Spoiler alert. No, no, no

01:11:23 ◼   ► update has been released. WatchOS 1.0. We're all still on 1.0. Jason's... A friend, a friend

01:11:31 ◼   ► in the chat room who's, who has no vowels in his name says that the, that that app is

01:11:37 ◼   ► installed with a watch app but not shown until you pair a watch. Oh, okay. And that's why

01:11:43 ◼   ► I didn't notice it was there. I don't feel as bad now about not noticing the activity

01:11:46 ◼   ► app. Good. Spencer would like to know what was the first compiled program that you

01:11:53 ◼   ► wrote on your own? I will just come out and say I've never done that so I am no

01:11:58 ◼   ► help. Me neither. Awesome. Awesome. Compiled program is the difference. I've done

01:12:04 ◼   ► things that are not compiled but I've never compiled anything. I've never done

01:12:07 ◼   ► anything. Basic programming and scripting and stuff but never anything compiled.

01:12:12 ◼   ► This is not a developer show. There are other shows that feature developers

01:12:15 ◼   ► those are available. There's ATP, _DavidSmith's got a podcast,

01:12:21 ◼   ► there's Daniel Jalkett and Manton Reese do a podcast, there are lots of

01:12:28 ◼   ► developer podcasts. This is not one of them. And then we have a question from

01:12:36 ◼   ► Patrick, "Do you think that force touch trackpads could be a gateway to touch ID

01:12:40 ◼   ► on Macs? Gateway. Yeah, I'm not sure Touch ID is worth it on a Mac.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Interesting. Why do you say that? I mean, yeah, I mean you can password. It's

01:12:58 ◼   ► easy to type in a password on the Mac. I don't know. I'm just, I'm not sure whether,

01:13:03 ◼   ► because that's a sensor that has to be built in and it's not cheap and

01:13:07 ◼   ► And it's not, it's like a little camera.

01:13:12 ◼   ► So now you're gonna tuck that underneath the Force Touch,

01:13:15 ◼   ► part of the Force Touch track pad,

01:13:16 ◼   ► because I'm not sure that those go together.

01:13:18 ◼   ► So now you're fitting another piece of technology in there.

01:13:21 ◼   ► I guess it could happen, but I just,

01:13:23 ◼   ► I'm not sure why it would be connected

01:13:25 ◼   ► to the Force Touch track pad.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And I kind of feel like it's more likely that we'll see,

01:13:31 ◼   ► we'll see Touch ID verifying your Mac

01:13:34 ◼   ► through something like what happens with the watch locking.

01:13:37 ◼   ► where your iPhone's presence or your iPhone being unlocked

01:13:41 ◼   ► in the presence of your Mac unlocks your Mac,

01:13:44 ◼   ► or something that's NFC-based with new Macs

01:13:47 ◼   ► that lets you touch with an unlocked watch

01:13:49 ◼   ► or something like that and unlock your Mac.

01:13:52 ◼   ► But I'm just not sure Apple thinks that typing a password

01:13:55 ◼   ► to unlock your Mac is a big enough inconvenience

01:13:59 ◼   ► that it needs to be solved with a piece of hardware like that.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure that they care that much.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And our last question this week comes from Matt.

01:14:08 ◼   ► What do you think about the prospect

01:14:10 ◼   ► of a future circular watch from Apple?

01:14:13 ◼   ► - Somebody did a story about this where they talked about,

01:14:16 ◼   ► I mean, the interface challenges

01:14:18 ◼   ► with the circular display are immense.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Like a lot of the Android Wear watches have stuff cut off

01:14:25 ◼   ► or cut off in some views.

01:14:28 ◼   ► They look good.

01:14:30 ◼   ► I wouldn't put it past Apple to at some point

01:14:33 ◼   ► do a circular watch,

01:14:35 ◼   ► But the problem with the circular watch

01:14:39 ◼   ► is that the circle is really great for the clock part.

01:14:44 ◼   ► But then when you try to design other things around it

01:14:46 ◼   ► and you've got to drop text in various places.

01:14:48 ◼   ► First off now, if your clock part is there,

01:14:53 ◼   ► for things like complications,

01:14:54 ◼   ► they've got to be on the inside instead of on the outside.

01:14:57 ◼   ► It's assuming a circular watch face,

01:14:59 ◼   ► which there are ones that are not, that are digital.

01:15:04 ◼   ► it it makes design of that apps difficult because you know they can't

01:15:08 ◼   ► the text can't be aligned really because it's all kind of radial

01:15:12 ◼   ► it's weird

01:15:13 ◼   ► and i think

01:15:15 ◼   ► i_d_i_'s kept driving apples gonna ride the square size and shape for a while

01:15:20 ◼   ► and say we don't need to a p

01:15:21 ◼   ► that round look

01:15:23 ◼   ► uh... it's better for a digital device to to have the the square stuff but

01:15:27 ◼   ► you never know

01:15:28 ◼   ► you never know without all them they might go there but i i wouldn't be

01:15:31 ◼   ► surprised if it's a long time before we see, if ever, before we see a round Apple

01:15:35 ◼   ► watch. I don't feel like Apple's like, "God, the lack of roundness is a major

01:15:39 ◼   ► compromise." I feel like they've got so many other things that they want to

01:15:42 ◼   ► worry about before all of the development complications and design

01:15:46 ◼   ► complications that would go into having a circular display.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Mr. Jason Snell, that brings us to the end of our show today.

01:15:54 ◼   ► I think it does. I think it does. Thanks everybody for their ask upgrade

01:16:00 ◼   ► questions. That's always fun. Yeah don't forget you can always get those to us

01:16:04 ◼   ► via Twitter just use the hashtag #askupgrade they go into a sheet and we

01:16:07 ◼   ► take a look at them every week and we pick up some to answer on the show. And

01:16:10 ◼   ► occasionally a boy band from the Philippines might crash our spreadsheet

01:16:14 ◼   ► but that's okay it's all good. Every now and then. And then we will we will also

01:16:19 ◼   ► work on a future planning what the future of Myke watches a movie is

01:16:25 ◼   ► because we don't have any planned right now but we will announce on the

01:16:29 ◼   ► show at some point, if we're doing another one, what that film would be.

01:16:33 ◼   ► We definitely will. We just don't have a date in mind yet. Got WWDC looming.

01:16:39 ◼   ► It's a special occasion, so we'll get back to it.

01:16:41 ◼   ► Yep, we definitely will. If you'd like to find the show notes for this week's episode

01:16:44 ◼   ► on the internet, you can do that at relay.fm/upgrade/37. There's a veritable cornucopia of links today,

01:16:52 ◼   ► including lots and lots of apps that we've discussed throughout the whole episode. We'd

01:16:56 ◼   ► like to thank Linda.com, Smile, and our friends at MailRoutes as well for helping us out with

01:17:02 ◼   ► this week's episode.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Mailbagging!

01:17:04 ◼   ► Mailbagging indeed. If you'd like to find us online you can find Jason Ease @JSnell on

01:17:08 ◼   ► Twitter J S N E double L and he is over at SixColors.com if you'd like to find his fantastic

01:17:15 ◼   ► writing. You can find it there.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Reviews of watch faces.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Reviews of watch faces, as many as you could wish for over at Six Colors. Six watch faces

01:17:24 ◼   ► maybe, maybe more, who knows.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Maybe more.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Maybe more.

01:17:27 ◼   ► And I am @imike and I host many shows on Relay FM of which Upgrade is a part.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's show and we'll be back next time.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Goodbye everybody.

01:17:40 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:17:44 ◼   ► [ Music ]